Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission v. Pride Homes, Inc.

Lowe, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In 1968 appellee Pride Homes, Inc. conveyed a right-of-way to appellant Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) for the installation and maintenance of a sewer line, and in 1969 appellant installed the line. Some six years later, on February 5,1975, appellant first returned to the site to repair damage to the line. At that time, appellant discovered that an excessive amount of soil had been placed over the line, thereby impeding its repair efforts.

A trespass and nuisance suit filed in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County ended by summary judgment entered in favor of appellees on the ground that the suit was barred by the statute of limitations. Appellant’s single contention on appeal is that the trial judge erred because the statute of limitations does not run against an agency of the State of Maryland. We emphasize that appellant’s contention is a narrow one, not addressing any peripheral questions of limitations applicability, such as when its cause of action accrued (See, e.g., Poffenberger v. Risser, 46 Md. App. 600 (1980), and Moy v. Bell, 46 Md. App. 364 (1980)), or whether the service provided by appellant was proprietary or governmental (See, e.g., Goldberg v. Howard Co. Welfare Bd., 260 Md. 351 (1970), and Loan Corporation v. Baltimore, 175 Md. 676 (1939)). We will respond as narrowly as the issue was posed.

Appellant relies solely upon two cases. The first, Central Collection Unit v. Atlantic Container Line, 277 Md. 626, 628 (1976), espouses the principle of law relied upon: ³⁹² "that limitations may not be asserted against the state when, in its sovereign capacity, it sues in its own courts.” The second, Katz v. Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, 284 Md. 503, 509 (1979), is relied upon because it held that the WSSC is a "State Agency,” apparently reasoning that because it has some of the attributes of its sovereign (e.g., the power of eminent domain and the power to create an employee merit system, Id. at 509 ), it has them all. But appellant chooses to ignore the blatant distinction in the very title of a case which it cites as Central Collection Unit v. Atlantic Container Line. The appellant as properly designated in that case was Central Collection Unit, State of Maryland.

There, it was the sovereign suing, and its unit was appended as descriptive, rather than prerequisite. Here, the WSSC may not sue in the name of the State because it is neither sovereign nor issue of the sovereign. It is a hybrid body corporate conceived as a result of a ménage á trois and derived primarily from the legislative loins of Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties. See Montgomery County, Md., Code ch. 86 (1972, 1977 Repl.

Vol.) and Prince George’s County, Md., Code App. I (1975 ed.). See, also, Washington Suburban Sanitary District (WSSD) Code (1970). It was not until 1971 that it was given the imprimatur of sovereign legitimacy when the WSSC Code was legalized by the General Assembly in 1971 Md. Laws, Ch. 115. In Neuenschwander v. Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, 187 Md. 67 (1946), the Court of Appeals toiled with the task of auspicating for the State that which the State had had thrust upon it but was not yet quite able to adopt as its own.

Noting that it was a "public corporation”. deriving its powers from the public local laws of the State’s progeny (the counties involved), the Court reasoned that the WSSC was a "municipal corporation,” as were the counties