considered conclusion of legal commentators is that burden resulting from governmental enterprises taken for benefit of community at large should be treated as administrative cost and spread among public receiving benefit of services
How later courts described this case
- considered conclusion of legal commentators is that burden resulting from governmental enterprises taken for benefit of community at large should be treated as administrative cost and spread among public receiving benefit of services
- only comprehensive enactment encompassing entire field would warrant inference that legislature had adopted judicially created doctrine of municipal liability
- superseded by statute on other grounds
- precedent governs until it gives a result so patently wrong, so manifestly unjust, that a break becomes unavoidable.
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
George Rose Smith, Justice, concurring. I join in Special Justice Moorhead’s opinion, but I should like to add a word in reply to the dissentient suggestion that our statute adopting the common law of England exempted that body of rules from judicial modification, leaving the power of repeal in the legislature alone. If that were true we would be absolutely bound to follow an English precedent announced 300 years ago, no matter how wrong we thought it to be, if no later case on the point could be found. The practical point of view, and I think the right one, is that when we adopted the English common law there was included in that heritage the fundamental common law rule that a court can and should overrule an erroneous judicial decision when it can be done without injustice to past or future litigants. That is all the court is doing today.