Opinion

Wilson v. Dothan City Board of Education

  • 295 Ala. 61
  • 322 So. 2d 708
  • 1975 Ala. LEXIS 1365
Court
Supreme Court of Alabama
Filed
Nov 6, 1975
Status
Published
Author
Shores
On the bench
Shores, Bloodworth, Faulkner, Jones, Almon, Embry, Heflin, Merrill, Maddox
Cited by
2 cases
Authority
More cited than 57.1%

The opinion

SHORES, Justice.

Plaintiff-appellant filed suit against the Dothan City Board of Education and the City of Dothan on April 1, 1975, claiming damages for injuries allegedly sustained as a result of the negligence of the Dothan City Board of Education, her employer.

The Board and the City filed motions to dismiss, which motions asserted that the city board of education and the municipality were immune from liability for damages while acting within a governmental capacity.

The trial court granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss and the plaintiff appealed.

The only case cited by appellant is Jackson v. City of Florence, 294 Ala. 592 , 320 So.2d 68 , decided July 10, 1975. She concedes that, for her to prevail on this appeal, the rule of that case must be extended to cases pending at the time of deliverance of the opinion. This court, in Jackson , abolished the defense of immunity for municipalities, and necessarily the agencies thereof, but limited the operation of the rule there laid down to causes of action arising on or after July 10, 1975. The decision to so limit the rule was carefully considered. We were faced with a choice of giving the new rule retrospective application, prospective application only, or so-called quasi-prospective application. We appreciated that either choice was capable of working a hardship on some, and arrived at the selection we made, because we believed it would adversely affect fewer litigants. Having made what was admittedly a difficult decision, we are not now inclined to change it.

In granting the defendants’ motions to dismiss, the trial court correctly applied *63 the law as it existed at that time. No other assignment of error having been made, the judgment appealed from must be affirmed.

Affirmed.

BLOODWORTH, FAULKNER, JONES, ALMON and EMBRY, JJ., concur.

HEFLIN,'C. J., and MERRILL and MADDOX, JJ., concur in the result.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

A word about cookies

We need a few to keep you signed in and the library working. The rest help us see which pages people use and where they get stuck. They stay off unless you say yes.