Opinion ID: 489481
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: PEPCO's Claims

Text: 29 PEPCO offers two arguments in support of its request for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict. First, PEPCO claims that it owes no duty to members of the travelling public to maintain traffic signals in accordance with the terms of its contract with the District. Second, PEPCO asserts that even assuming it owes such a duty to members of the public, no PEPCO employee breached the duty in this case. In addition, PEPCO urges that it is entitled at least to a new trial because the district court failed to give an essential instruction to the jury. 30 PEPCO's primary argument focuses on the scope of the utility's duty to members of the public. As we have noted, PEPCO is under contract with the District to provide certain services relating to the maintenance of traffic lights. PEPCO argues that it owes a duty to the District to perform these services, but owes no such duty to members of the public. Thus, PEPCO claims that if it fails to maintain traffic lights as provided in the contract and this failure causes harm to an automobile passenger, the District can successfully sue PEPCO for breach of contract, but the passenger cannot successfully sue PEPCO in tort. In making this argument, PEPCO relies primarily on H.R. Moch Co. v. Rensselaer Water Co., 247 N.Y. 160, 159 N.E. 896 (1928), a well-known decision written by Justice (then Judge) Cardozo. Confronting similar facts to those in the case at bar, Cardozo rejected the notion that a contractual commitment could create a duty to the general public in tort. PEPCO argues that the District of Columbia has adopted the Moch rule and cites Morgan v. District of Columbia, 468 A.2d 1306 (D.C.App.1983), and Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C.App.1981), in support of this claim. 31 In fact, the District of Columbia's local courts have taken no position on the issue presented in Moch and the case at bar. Morgan and Warren do quote a passage from the Moch decision: 32 An intention to assume an obligation of indefinite extension to every member of the public is seen to be the more improbable when we recall the crushing burden that the obligation would impose.... A promisor will not be deemed to have had in mind the assumption of a risk so overwhelming for any trivial reward. 33 Moch, 247 N.Y. at 165-66, 159 N.E. 896 (quoted in Morgan, 468 A.2d at 1313; Warren, 444 A.2d at 7). Each decision quoted this language, however, in a context very different from the context involved in Moch and the case at bar. Morgan and Warren each involved a private citizen's claim against the District for failure to provide adequate police services. The decisions rejected these claims on the primary ground that any other result would place police officials in the position of insuring the personal safety of every member of the community, notwithstanding limited resources and the inescapable choices of allocation that must be made. Morgan, 468 A.2d at 1311; see Warren, 444 A.2d at 4. The question in this case (and in Moch itself) is very different. No one contests that the District has a duty to the public, enforceable in tort, to maintain streets in safe condition, see District of Columbia v. Woodbury, 136 U.S. 450, 10 S.Ct. 990, 34 L.Ed. 472 (1890); the question is whether a public utility, by contracting with the District to perform services integral to this duty, assumes a duty to the public to perform the contractual commitment with reasonable care. The use of language from Moch in Morgan and Warren cannot sensibly be thought to indicate the view of the District's courts on this question. And we can find no other cases decided by the District's courts that evince any such view. 34 A decision of this circuit, however, clearly rejected the Moch approach in a case very similar to the case at bar. In Caldwell v. Bechtel, Inc., 631 F.2d 989 (D.C.Cir.1980), a subway system worker who had contracted silicosis as a result of the high dust level in the subway tunnels sued an engineering firm (Bechtel) that had contracted with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to provide safety engineering services. We stated that the issue in the case was whether the engineering firm owed the worker a duty to protect him against unreasonable risk of harm. Id. at 992. We found that the firm did owe the worker such a duty, and we designated the contract as the duty's source: 35 The duties that Bechtel undertook in its contract with WMATA are relevant to this case, not because they illustrate Bechtel's point that a contractual duty was owed only to WMATA, but because by assuming a contractual duty to WMATA, Bechtel placed itself in the position of assuming a duty to appellant in tort. The particular circumstances of this case, including the Bechtel-WMATA contract, Bechtel's superior skills and position, and Bechtel's resultant ability to foresee the harm that might reasonably be expected to befall appellant, created a duty in Bechtel to take reasonable steps to prevent harm to appellant from the hazardous conditions of the subway tunnels. 36 Id. at 997. In the absence of any later District of Columbia law to the contrary, this decision binds us, and we think it controls this case. Like Bechtel, PEPCO entered into a contract to perform services within its field of expertise; PEPCO thereby acquired a duty to foreseeable plaintiffs (in this case, members of the travelling public) to perform these services with reasonable care. 37 We note, finally, that our holding is consonant with the Restatement of Torts (Second) and with the position taken by a majority of the state courts. Section 324A of the Restatement provides that 38 [o]ne who undertakes, gratuitously or for consideration, to render services to another which he should recognize as necessary for the protection of a third person or his things, is subject to liability to the third person for physical harm resulting from his failure to exercise reasonable care to protect his undertaking, if ... he has undertaken to perform a duty owed by the other to the third person.... 39 We think this section of the Restatement exactly describes this case. Courts in a majority of the states have adopted this section. And many of them have applied it to situations nearly identical to that which we confront. See, e.g., David v. Broadway Maintenance Corp., 451 F.Supp. 877 (E.D.Pa.1978) (applying state law to find that a street light maintenance company was liable to a pedestrian for injuries caused by the company's negligent maintenance of a street light); Fink v. Kasler Corp., 3 Hawaii App. 270, 649 P.2d 1173 (1982) (holding that a company that had contracted with the state to maintain stop signs owed a duty to members of the travelling public to maintain the signs with reasonable care); Schmeck v. City of Shawnee, 232 Kan. 11, 651 P.2d 585 (1982) (affirming a jury award against a power company on the ground that the company, which had contracted with the city to install traffic lights, owed a duty to automobile passengers to do so with reasonable care). These holdings serve to confirm our view that PEPCO can be held liable to members of the public for injuries caused by its failure to perform with reasonable care the services it contracted to render. 40 PEPCO argues in the alternative that it was entitled to a judgment notwithstanding the verdict because it did not breach its contract with the District and therefore could not have breached its duty to the public. This argument reduces to the proposition that by attempting to repair the traffic signals and then referring the continuing problem to the District, PEPCO satisfied all of its obligations under the contract. We think, however, that the jury could reasonably have found otherwise and thus that entry of a judgment notwithstanding the verdict would have been inappropriate. Under the contract, PEPCO must repair faulty incoming cables at all times. In addition, PEPCO must attempt to repair faulty signal control equipment on evenings and weekends, but may refer intractable problems relating to such equipment to the District. We note as an initial matter that the District introduced uncontested evidence that when the District's on-call mechanic replaced an incoming cable, the traffic signals began to operate properly. A reasonable jury could have inferred from this evidence that the traffic signals malfunctioned because of a problem with the incoming cable, which PEPCO has full contractual responsibility to repair. Even if we ignore this evidence and assume that the lights malfunctioned because of faulty signal control equipment, we think a jury could reasonably have found against PEPCO. The jury could have found on the basis of the evidence presented that PEPCO's attempts to open the traffic signal control cabinet were insufficient. In addition, the jury could have found on the basis of this evidence that PEPCO failed to notify the District of the continuing problem with the traffic signals in timely manner. The evidence, in short, allowed a reasonable jury to find that PEPCO breached its contract with the District and thereby breached a duty owed to members of the travelling public. 41 Finally, PEPCO claims that it was entitled to a new trial because the district judge failed to give the jury any instructions relating to the duty PEPCO owed to members of the public. The judge, however, did instruct the jury as to PEPCO's duty. After setting forth the District of Columbia's duty, the district judge continued: 42 [I]f any hazardous condition arises in any such traffic signal and ... persons in concert with [the District] [who] are engaged in the maintenance of that system become aware of it and fail to take reasonable steps to eliminate it, and if [you] find that that hazardous condition was a proximate cause of an injury ... then you may find those responsible for not eliminating that condition liable to a plaintiff in damages. 43 We think these instructions adequately describe the duty we have found PEPCO owes to members of the travelling public to repair traffic signals. We therefore deny PEPCO's request for a new trial.