State Ex Rel. Roy H. Adkins, Admr. v. Edgar B. Sims, Auditor

Summary

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia refused mandamus compelling the state auditor to issue warrants for $3,500 legislative awards to six administrators whose decedents were killed in 1940 when their automobile went over a bank on State Route No. 61, where no guard rail, road markers, or painted center line existed. The court held that neither the law-of-the-case doctrine from its 1945 Adkins decision nor the Legislature's express 1947 declaration that the awards discharged a 'moral obligation' of the State bound the courts, because whether an appropriation serves a public or private purpose—and hence whether a moral obligation exists—is a judicial question. On the merits it concluded that the road commissioner's failure to install safety devices at this one point among many reflected a permissible exercise of discretion limited by available funds, was not negligence of any character, and created no moral obligation, especially as sovereign immunity and the governmental nature of highway work barred any direct recovery. Judge Kenna concurred in the result but disputed the majority's reasoning, contending the Legislature's moral-obligation determination should be conclusive unless shown arbitrary, capricious, or improperly influenced.