Opinion ID: 1726853
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 22

Heading: Opportunity and Ability to Exercise Care

Text: The personal representative contends that OPPD had the opportunity to exercise care by simply implementing the internal design standards OPPD had in place at the time it originally installed the buried powerlines. Those internal standards indicate that OPPD will bury a warning or identifying tape about 1 foot below the surface of the ground directly above the power cables when specified by an OPPD design engineer. OPPD asserts that the decision whether to specify the identifying tape is discretionary with its engineers. Furthermore, OPPD argues that the One-Call Notification System Act eliminated the need for OPPD to use the identifying tape. Clearly, OPPD design engineers could have specified the identifying tape, although there were no code or industry standards mandating its use. It is not clear, however, that identifying tape would have prevented the accident. At most, the presence of the tape would have warned excavators that they were about to encounter an underground powerline. The Burton employees who did the actual excavation knew this and for that reason, carefully exposed the conduits using handtools instead of power equipment. Because Hughes was not present during the excavation, we cannot say on this record that he would ever have been aware of the identifying tape even if it had been specified and used.