Shepard v. City of Seattle

Citations

• 59 Wash. 363
• 109 P. 1067
• 1910 Wash. LEXIS 1205

Syllabus

<p>Municipal Corporations — Ordinance'—Validity. Where an ordinance regulates several kinds of hospitals by provisions that are severable both as to the character of the institutions and the requirements to be met, some of the requirements may be valid and others invalid, or they may be valid as to one kind of an institution and invalid as to another; and it will be upheld in so far as it is valid.</p> <p>Municipal Corporations — Police Power. In all matters pertaining to the public health and safety, substantially the entire police power of the state is vested in municipal corporations of the first class.</p> <p>Municipal Cobpobations — Police Power — Hospitals — Regulations. Under the police power, a city of the first class may prohibit the maintenance of a private hospital tending to spread contagious diseases in crowded localities, and may require the same to be connected with the sewers of the city.</p> <p>Same — Nuisances—Pkivate Hospitals fob Insane. It is a proper exercise of the police power for an ordinance of a city of the first class to declare any private hospital or sanitarium for the treatment of inebriates or persons sufiering from insanity or other mental diseases to be a public nuisance, unless its location and maintenance are consented to in writing by the owners of private property situated within 200 feet of the hospital buildings; since it would practically destroy the value of all residential property in its immediate vicinity, and the danger differs in kind rather than in degree.</p> <p>Same — Permit foe Private Hospital. The provision requiring a written permit from the city commissioners of health, in an ordinance prohibiting the maintenance of a private hospital for the treatment of the insane except under certain conditions, is not objectionable as an unreasonable exercise of the police power.</p> <p>Municipal Cobpobations — Ordinance—Validity — Motive •— Judicial Power. A general ordinance, valid on its face, is not rendered void by the