Cases argued and decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Texas, during the latter part of the Austin term, 1884, and the Tyler term, 1884. Volume 62. Page: 125

                                
1884.]         CITY OF GALYESTON V. POSNAINSKY.           125
Opinion of the court.
will to some extent cite; feeling that a conclusion thus reached will
more likely be correct than the conclusion of a single court, based
upon such course of reasoning as it might pursue.
It has been often held that no action lies against a subdivision of
a state, created solely for a public purpose, by a general law applicable
to all such subdivisions, for an injury received by a person
through the neglect of the officers of such subdivision, even though,
by the general law, such subdivision may be given a quasi corporate
existence, the better to enable it to perform the public service imposed
by the law.
The English cases, the cases in the New England States and in
some of the other states in which such quasi municipal corporations
exist, illustrate this rule. Those cases are but the practical application
and proper extension of the rule that a state cannot be made
liable to an action for the neglect or misfeasance of its officers,
through which a person sustains injury, unless by statute the action
is given.
In so far as a quasi corporation exercises powers exclusively public
in their character, forced upon it without its consent, simply because
the state can thus, through such local agencies, more easily and
effectively, discharge duties essentially its own, it is but proper that
no action should be maintained against it for the negligence, or even
misfeasance, of its officers, unless the action be given by an expression
of the same sovereign will which arbitrarily imposed the duty.
The necessity for imposing, even on such quasi corporations, a
liability for the negligence and misfeasance of their officers, and
for giving actions against them, through which such liability may
be enforced, has generally been felt, and hence statutes ordinarily
have been enacted, fixing the liability and giving the action.
The rule is very clearly presented in the case of Bigelow v. Inhabitants
of Randolph, 14 Gray, 543, in which the court said: "It
was said by Chief Justice Parsons, half a century since, in Riddle
v. Proprietors of Locks ant Canals, 7 Mass., 187, and adjudged by
a full court in Mower v. Inhabitants of Leicester, 9 Mass., 247, that a
private action cannot be maintained against a town, or other quasi
corporation, for a neglect of corporate duty, unless such action be
given by statute. And so it has since been held by this and other
courts. This rule of law, however, is of limited application. It is
applied, in case of towns, only to the neglect or omissions of a town
to perform those duties which are imposed on all towns, without
their corporate assent, and exclusively for public purposes; and not
to the neglect of those obligations which a town incurs when a special