Abernathy v. Sisters of St. Mary's

The plaintiff sued the defendant hospital for $35,000 for personal injuries allegedly caused by negligence. Bound by Missouri's long-standing precedent upholding charitable immunity, the trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant.

The plaintiff appealed, and the case was consolidated and transferred on the court's own motion to be heard en banc alongside Garnier v. St. Andrew Presbyterian Church of St. Louis.

Plaintiff Edward Abernathy was a paying patient at St. Mary's Hospital, operated by the Sisters of St. Mary's. The complaint alleges that a hospital employee left Abernathy unattended in a bathroom, where he fell and fractured his leg due to the hospital's negligent failure to provide an attendant or handrails.

The defendant did not dispute the facts for purposes of the motion; it asserted only that, as a charitable corporation, it was immune from tort liability.

Whether a nonprofit charitable corporation operating a hospital remains immune from liability for the negligence of its employees toward a paying patient.

A nonprofit corporation organized for charitable purposes is liable for its own negligence and for the negligence of its agents and employees acting within the scope of their employment, under the ordinary rules of agency and respondeat superior.

No. Charitable immunity is abrogated. The doctrine is abolished prospectively, and the judgment for the hospital is reversed and remanded for trial on the merits.

The court traced charitable immunity to an English trust-fund rationale that England itself had discarded, and found that the doctrine had never rested on legislative command in Missouri.

Modern charitable hospitals operate as substantial commercial enterprises that purchase liability insurance and pass costs along in their rates. Immunity therefore shifts the loss to the injured patient without any offsetting benefit to the charity's mission.

Because the rule was judge-made, the court concluded it could and should be unmade judicially rather than await legislative action.

Charitable immunity (abrogated). Respondeat superior applies to nonprofit corporations on the same terms as to for-profit entities.

Prospective overruling: a court abandoning a settled common-law rule may limit the new rule to the case at bar and causes of action arising after the decision date.

Judgment reversed and cause remanded. The new rule applies to this case and to all future causes of action arising after the date of the opinion.

Concurrence — Justice DONNELLY: agrees that immunity should end but would leave the question of retroactivity to the legislature, warning that prospective-only overruling functions as legislation from the bench.

Pitfall: students often read this case as creating hospital liability. It does not — it removes a defense. Plaintiff still must prove duty, breach, causation, and damages on remand.

Watch the prospectivity holding; it is frequently the tested point rather than the abrogation itself.

Abernathy is the anchor citation for Missouri's abandonment of charitable immunity and is widely cited in other jurisdictions for the proposition that a judge-made immunity may be judicially abolished.

Garnier v. St. Andrew Presbyterian Church of St. Louis (consolidated).

President & Directors of Georgetown College v. Hughes, 130 F.2d 810 (D.C. Cir. 1942).