Tenant in low-income apartment complex owned by city housing authority, who was allegedly shot in the leg on the front porch of her apartment, brought premises-liability action against authority, alleging that authority was negligent in failing to provide property security or take measures to keep property safe, or both.
The trial court granted authority’s motion for summary judgment. Tenant appealed.
The Court of Appeals held that housing authority was an instrumentality of the city entitled to sovereign immunity.
City housing authority was a public corporation using public funds to perform for the city what the General Assembly had deemed to be an essential public and governmental purpose, and thus authority was an instrumentality of the city entitled to sovereign immunity, in premises-liability action brought against it by tenant who was allegedly shot on the front porch of her apartment in low-income apartment complex owned by the authority; authority was statutorily defined as a public body corporate and politic, legislation creating the authority provided that it exercised public and essential governmental functions, and General Assembly authorized authority’s creation in order to address shortage of safe and sanitary dwelling accommodations that were affordable for persons of low income.