Opinion ID: 1841842
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Assumption of the Risk as a Defense to Wantonness

Text: Appellant: After properly submitting the wanton count to the jury, contends the Appellant, the trial court erred in charging the jury that its finding that Plaintiff assumed the risk of injury (if it should so find) would preclude Plaintiff's right of recovery. Appellant directs our attention to the following language in Blount Brothers Construction Company v. Rose, 274 Ala. 429, 437, 149 So.2d 821, 830 (1962): Under our decisions, wantonness of the deceased Rose is not a defense to this complaint. Nor is assumption of risk, which is in the nature of wantonness, a good defense. Foreman v. Dorsey Trailers, 256 Ala. 253, 54 So.2d 499 [1951]. Once a jury issue is established by the evidence on the theory of wanton conduct, says Appellant, the Blount Brothers principle is equally applicable in the instant context of a premises owner/independent contractor. Appellees: [1] According to Appellees, because the situation in Blount Brothers, supra, as well as in other cases cited by Appellant, did not involve a premises owner/independent contractor dichotomy, any general rule regarding assumption of the risk, as no valid defense to wanton conduct, is incompatible with the facts now at issue. Appellees bolster their support for an exception to the general rule in the premises owner/independent contractor situation with the following from 41 Am. Jur.2d Independent Contractors § 28 (1968): As an exception to the general rule requiring the owner or occupier of premises (the contractee) to furnish a safe place of work to an independent contractor and the latter's employees, the owner or occupier is under no duty to protect them against risks arising from or intimately connected with defects of the premises, or of machinery or appliances located thereon, which the contractor has undertaken to repair. Closely related to this exception is the rule that the owner is not liable for death or injury of an independent contractor or one of his employees resulting from dangers which the contractor, as an expert, has known, or as to which he and his employees `assumed the risk.' As to contracts for such repair work, it is reasoned that the contract is sufficient in itself to impart notice of a defect, the extent of which the repairman must discover for himself.... [2] Appellees summarize their contentions thusly: Mr. Copeland, the independent contractor in the case now under consideration, undertook to repair a defect in a fuel tank. That in and of itself was sufficient to put the independent contractor on notice of the possible dangerous condition from combustible fumes in the tank. This was clearly a working condition, part and parcel of the contract itself, and although dangerous, was nonetheless normal and ordinary under the circumstances. Accordingly, the independent contractor and his employee, the Plaintiff-Appellant herein, must be deemed to have assumed the risk.