Opinion ID: 1613711
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: The Extent of the Negligence of the Plaintiff, Mark Westover.

Text: As an aid to analyze the extent of a plaintiff's negligence, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals offered a three part test in Associated Engineers v. Job, 370 F.2d 633, 641 (8th Cir.1966) cert. denied 389 U.S. 823, 88 S.Ct. 59, 19 L.Ed.2d 77 (1967). Judge (later Justice) Blackmun arrived at these three factors after an in depth examination of South Dakota case law on the subject, Associated Engineers v. Job, 370 F.2d at 641: Three factors may properly be considered in appraising the quality of a plaintiff's negligence: the precautions he took for his own safety; the extent to which he should have comprehended the risk as a result of warnings, experience, or other factors, and the foreseeability of injury as a consequence of his conduct. These factors of course may overlap in a given case, for a plaintiff may increase the foreseeability of injury by failing to take safety precautions and greater precautions may be expected if he is aware of danger. We subsequently cited these factors with approval in Lovell, supra . Both plaintiff and East River sought to show that the analysis contained in the Job factors, was in accord with their opposing views as to the extent of the plaintiff's contributory negligence. Plaintiff did take several steps for his own safety. He listened for the shutdown of the substation transformer and waited for the switch of the north OCR to be opened. Under normal circumstances with which he had experience, this would have de-energized the OCR. He was also trained to visibly look to see if the switches were open. This he did, albeit, he looked at the wrong switches. East River argues that the plaintiff should have been wearing the available rubber gloves and tested the OCR before attempting to work on it. This is the same argument East River unsuccessfully advanced to the jury at trial. Experts testifying for both sides at trial recognized that visible inspection was an optional alternative to the use of safety equipment. In fact, the plaintiff had only been trained by Sioux Valley to use the visual check method on de-energized equipment. The safety equipment was for use on equipment known to be energized. With inferences to be decided in favor of the prevailing party, it appears that he took precautions for his own safety. The second Job factor is a consideration of the risk as a result of the warnings, experience and other factors. On the day of the accident, eighteen trained personnel from East River and Sioux Valley were working on the substation project besides the plaintiff. Plaintiff may have even borrowed a tool from a co-worker before he began his ascent up the substation. Yet, not one person there recognized the danger to the point of shouting a warning to the plaintiff. It is clear that some of the personnel there were watching Marv Jastram at that time and the rest claim not to have seen the plaintiff make his ill-fated climb. However, this points out that no one there took overall responsibility for supervision of the project and the safety of those involved. [12] The plaintiff had only worked on de-energizing a substation on one prior occasion. In fact, all of the Sioux Valley crew, although experienced at repairing de-energized OCR's, had little prior work time on this type of project which involved backfeeding power from the portable substation into the Garretson substation. [13] The final Job criteria is the foreseeability of injury as a consequence of the plaintiff's conduct. In this case, this factor is readily answered by the previous two. Based on his previous training and experience, there was an evidentiary basis for the jury to find plaintiff's conduct did not increase the foreseeability of the accident to more than slight. Defendant's analysis of plaintiff's conduct arrives at a different interpretation than that of the jury. It finds his contributory negligence to be well above the slight standard. However, the fundamental flaw in its argument is that it fails to compare its own conduct against that of the plaintiff. Norwest Capital Management & Trust Co. v. U.S., 828 F.2d 1330, 1336 (8th Cir.1987). Such a comparison is the basis upon which SDCL 20-9-2, and interpretative case law such as Nugent, rely in making a determination as to whether plaintiff's negligence is more than slight.