Title: Van Gordon v. PGE CO.

State: oregon

Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court

Document:

693 P.2d 1285 (1985)
298 Or. 497
Brock A. VAN GORDON, by Elizabeth Ann Van Gordon, His Guardian Ad Litem, Petitioner On Review,
v.
PORTLAND GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY, a Corporation, Respondent On Review, Portland General Electric Company, a Corporation, Third-Party Plaintiff/Appellant,
v.
Kino Barker and Helene Barker, Third-Party Defendants/Respondents.
TC A7902-00508/CA 19901/SC S30613.

Supreme Court of Oregon, In Banc.
Argued and Submitted September 5, 1984.
Decided January 15, 1985.
*1286 Janet C. Neuman, Portland, argued the cause for petitioner on review. With her on the petition were John E. Frohnmayer, Barbee B. Lyon and Tonkon, Torp, Galen, Marmaduke & Booth, Portland.
John R. Faust, Jr., of Schwabe, Williamson, Wyatt, Moore & Roberts, Portland, argued the cause for respondent on review. With him on the response to the petition was James K. Buell of Buell, Black & Dupuy, Portland.
JONES, Justice.
This case is before us on review for the third time. Our review is restricted to the issue of whether evidence offered by plaintiff of a change in language of warning signs posted after an "event"[1] constituted evidence of subsequent remedial measures.
Plaintiff Brock Van Gordon was burned in the hot water at Austin Hot Springs, a park owned and operated by Portland General Electric (PGE) on May 20, 1978. The case has been in litigation since February 7, 1979. Plaintiff alleged PGE was reckless in failing to warn of the dangers at this park. A jury agreed and awarded damages. The facts of this case were set out in our first review of the case, Van Gordon v. PGE Co., 294 Or. 761, 662 P.2d 714 (1983), which we shall call Van Gordon I:
As mentioned, plaintiff alleged that PGE was reckless in that it failed to warn visitors to the hot springs of the possible danger of extremely hot water. In Van Gordon I, we held that the allegation of reckless conduct against PGE was properly submitted to the jury after defining "reckless" conduct as set forth in the Restatement (Second) Torts § 500 (1965), which reads:
In his effort to prove that PGE was reckless in failing to properly warn the public of the danger of the hot water, thereby creating "an unreasonable risk of physical harm to another," the plaintiff offered in evidence a letter from a member of the public who had been burned at Austin Hot Springs and who emphatically warned PGE of the danger of the hot water to children and pets. This letter was written some time before Brock Van Gordon was injured. Additional evidence showed PGE had actual notice prior to the Van Gordon accident that two children had received burns. As this court mentioned in Van Gordon I, the plaintiff also offered evidence that before young Van Gordon was burned
and that
We concluded Van Gordon I by saying that because a jury could find that PGE knew about the dangerous conditions in some parts of the river, and knew about the alternative approach to the river, the jury could conclude that neglecting to post warning signs visible from the approach to the river used by Brock Van Gordon's grandmother was reckless. We reversed the Court of Appeals decision, 59 Or. App. 740, 652 P.2d 817, that PGE was not reckless as a matter of law. We then remanded the case to the Court of Appeals for consideration of the other alleged errors claimed by PGE.
After that remand, the Court of Appeals found that the plaintiff's offered evidence of subsequent remedial measures was erroneously received and ordered a new trial. Van Gordon v. PGE, 64 Or. App. 135, 667 P.2d 532 (1983).
We again granted review and in Van Gordon II we remanded the case to the Court of Appeals to apply the new evidence code rule, OEC 103, to determine whether the evidence received was prejudicial. Van Gordon v. PGE Co., 295 Or. 811, 670 P.2d 1026 (1983) (Van Gordon II). On remand, the Court of Appeals found the error was prejudicial. Van Gordon v. PGE Co., 67 Or. App. 290, 677 P.2d 739 (1984). Now for the third time we have granted review, this time to decide whether the evidence offered by plaintiff was evidence of subsequent remedial measures within the meaning of OEC 407 and its predecessor law and, if so, whether any error was prejudicial.
At the time of the injury, PGE maintained three signs that read simply "HOT WATER" and were visible from the main access route to the hot springs but not from the route used by plaintiff and his grandmother. The new signs read:
PGE argues that evidence of the change in the language of the signs was inadmissible under the rule excluding evidence of subsequent remedial measures.
This rule was adopted in Oregon as a part of the new evidence code. The text of OEC 407 reads:
Although the rule was not in effect at the time of the Van Gordon accident, it facilitates our discussion because, as stated in the legislative commentary, the rule, which is identical to FRE 407, merely restates decisional law in Oregon. Phipps v. Air King Manufacturing Corp., 263 Or. 141, 501 P.2d 790 (1972); Rich v. Tite-Knot Pine Mill, 245 Or. 185, 421 P.2d 370 (1960).
In Rich v. Tite-Knot Pine Mill, supra, we said:
The commentary reflects the rationale for the rule:
The first rationale for the rule is that the subsequent repair is not in fact an admission or in any event such conduct has low probative value on a relevancy scale. The second rationale for the rule is that of public policy, encouraging safety measures to be undertaken after accidents.
There are two basic reasons why the rule does not apply in this case: First, the plain language of the rule which, as mentioned, restates existing Oregon law, provides "when, after an event, measures are taken which, if taken previously, would have made the event less likely to occur." In the present case, the posting of the new signs would not have prevented the Van Gordon accident, nor made it less likely to occur. Had the new signs with the new language been posted before Brock Van Gordon was burned, the new signs would not have made the accident less likely to occur because the uncontroverted evidence showed that the location of the signs made it impossible for Brock Van Gordon's grandmother to read them. She was on a different path leading to the hot springs and would not have been able to read the signs. Thus, the posting of the new signs fails to qualify as a subsequent safety measure under the basic definition of OEC 407. The new signs were not a remedy at all as to the Van Gordon accident.
Second, the so-called "subsequent remedial measures" rule does not apply because there was no evidence presented by the plaintiff or PGE that these new signs were erected because of the injury to the plaintiff. The testimony of a PGE employe was that the three existing signs were not in keeping with the forest environment. He asserted the white signs stenciled with red letters were not rustic looking so the new signs were erected "to make them more aesthetically pleasing." In addition to the fact that the replacement of the signs had no relation to the event of plaintiff's injury, there was no evidence that PGE even knew of plaintiff's injury at the time the new signs were erected. Brock Van Gordon was injured on May 20, 1978. In September, 1978, the new signs were erected. PGE did not learn of Brock Van Gordon's injury until November, 1978. The new signs cannot be considered remedial safety measures in response to the Van Gordon accident if PGE did not know of the injury or its circumstances. In other words, a defendant must know of the prior event in order to fashion a safety measure to remedy any hazard that caused the event. The evidence is uncontroverted that new signs were not safety measures designed to remedy conditions that caused Brock Van Gordon's injury. The "event" referred to in the rule is the incident which caused the harm to the plaintiff. The rule does not apply in this case because the new signs were not an aftermath of the accident.
*1290 As pointed out by Professors Wright and Graham in their exhaustive treatise on federal evidence, where a defendant undertakes a remedial measure after an accident
The evidential doctrine of "subsequent remedial measures" and OEC 407 do not require exclusion of the evidence because the motivation for the remedial measure was not the prevention of a recurrence of the Van Gordon accident. PGE did not know of the accident and was motivated to change the signs simply for aesthetic reasons. The new signs did not reflect hindsight gained from the Van Gordon accident.
If the evidence was not properly excluded as a subsequent remedial measure, under what theory was it admissible? A holding that the new signs were not inadmissible because of the subsequent remedial repair rule does not make them automatically admissible. The evidence concerning the new signs must possess some independent relevance. These signs did possess some independent relevance because they demonstrated not only that PGE knew of the hot water, which was obvious, but also that PGE knew of the risk of hot water burns to children. The erection of the signs was close enough in time to the accident to allow the inference that PGE, at the time of the injury, was aware of the hazards that were the subject of the signs' cautionary message. This inference alone would support the admissibility of the new signs.[2]
The Restatement definition of recklessness which we adopted in Van Gordon I requires the plaintiff prove that the defendant knew or had reason to know that its conduct created an unreasonable risk to others. The signs, along with substantial other evidence, tended to show that PGE knew of the danger and knew of it before the Van Gordon accident. Therefore, the jury was entitled to infer that knowledge as portrayed by the signs was acquired prior to the time Brock Van Gordon was scalded in PGE's Austin Hot Springs and that PGE was reckless in failing to warn the plaintiff of the known danger.
The Court of Appeals is reversed and the trial court judgment is reinstated.
[1]  OEC 407 uses the word "event" to describe what caselaw and commentary refer to as the "accident." Both words are used to mean an incident which causes harm to the plaintiff. Insofar as applying the rule of evidence is concerned, the proper word is "event."
[2]  Other evidence showed that PGE received a letter warning of the dangers cautioned against in the signs and that PGE had actual notice that two other children had been burned at the same site sometime before the Van Gordon accident.