Spechtenhauser v. City of Dubuque

I dissent because the trial court’s instructions, read together, overstated the defendant city’s duty of inspection and oversimplified the elements of a cause of action for breach of a city’s statutory responsibility “for the care, supervision, and control” of sidewalks and other public grounds. Iowa Code § 364.12(2) (1983).

Neither the controlling statute, which the majority opinion quotes, nor its referenced predecessors have ever described a city’s duty as one of “inspection.” The active inspection duty referred to in our cases has never been held to be coequal with, or somehow independent…