Opinion ID: 1642750
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Summary Judgment for Lenz-Ramseur

Text: The trial court entered the summary judgment for Lenz-Ramseur on the separate ground that the plaintiffs' expert Jones did not establish that Lenz-Ramseur caused the fire. The trial court concluded that Jones opined that the size of the fuse on the unit disconnect located on the HVAC unit did not cause or contribute to the fire and that Jones's remaining opinions were so speculative that they could not provide a basis for the plaintiffs' claims against Lenz-Ramseur. Milam hired Lenz-Ramseur to install the HVAC unit. Lenz-Ramseur installed the unit, including the duct work, registers, and grills, but its work did not include any of the electrical work involved in the installation. The unit installed was manufactured by Trane; it had been substituted for the unit originally specified, manufactured by York. The substitution was made by Hollywood and approved by Milam. Jones's criticism of Lenz-Ramseur's installation of the Trane unit was that the Trane unit called for 150-ampere fuses rather than the 200-ampere fuses specified for the York unit. Jones charges that Lenz-Ramseur installed the unit with improper fusing, i.e., with 200-ampere fuses. He testified as follows: Q. Mr. Jones, knowing that Lenz-Ramseur did not perform any of the electrical wiring in relation to the HVAC system, would your answer remain the same that you criticized them for improper fusing. ... A. I'm looking at page 8 of 8 of my notes of Hollywood Video. I am looking at Trane data that I consolidated from various reports from Trane. There is a statement on there that the maximum fuse size or maximum circuit breaker, and HACR Breaker, is 150 ampere. The circuit that it was hooked up to was a 200 ampere circuit. Yes, they should have checked that. Q. So your opinion is that Lenz-Ramseur should have checked the ampere wattage so to speak? A. It was with their unit substitution that had the smaller ampere requirements. Q. You're talking about the substitution of the unit from the York system to the Trane system? A. Yes. Q. Okay. So its your opinion that Lenz-Ramseur had an obligation to determine that wiringto determine whether the wiring of the Trane system was appropriate? A. The answer to that question is no. That doesn't refer to the fuses. Fuses are required by their unit. It's required by their specification for their unit from Trane. This is something their service people when they do it normally would check if it has the proper fuse size so that the unit is not hooked up improperly. Q. ... You're not testifying that Lenz-Ramseur had any obligation to make sure the wiring of with the Trane system was appropriate? A. Correct. Later in the same deposition, Jones also testified: Q. Mr. Jones, is it your testimony that the size of the fuse on the disconnect unit that connects to the air conditioning unit caused or contributed to this fire? A. I really don't have an opinion that it did or didn't. Vesta and Wausau point out, however, that Jones's testimony with respect to the fusing in the unit disconnect on the HVAC itself does not affect his testimony that Lenz-Ramseur had a duty to alert the proper parties about the disparity in the fusing in the service disconnect, the point at which the HVAC was connected to the electrical system. Jones's affidavit and testimony also indicate that this disparity allowed more electrical current into the HVAC circuit than it was designed to accommodate, thus resulting in an over-fused condition, which, coupled with inadequate grounding and other electrical installation faults, probably resulted in the short circuit that caused the fire. That is, Jones's testimony indicates that had the HVAC been connected with the proper fusing, the fuses would have blown before the insulation in the conduit degraded and caused the short circuit that in turn caused the fire. In paragraph 22 of his affidavit of February 25, 2003, Jones stated: Lenz-Ramseur, as the installer of the HVAC unit, had a duty to determine that the fuse sizes for the HVAC unit were proper, especially in light of the fact that the units were switched once the plans were issued. Lenz-Ramseur also had a duty to coordinate with the electrical designer. Lenz-Ramseur did not follow through with these duties. Had Lenz-Ramseur followed through, it would have noted and procured the change of the improper fuse size, avoiding the damages in this case. The plaintiffs rely on the settled rule that the question of proximate cause is usually a question of fact for the jury. The question of proximate causation is ordinarily one for the jury, if reasonable inferences from the evidence support the plaintiff's theory. Marshall County v. Uptain, 409 So.2d 423 (Ala.[1981]). Garner v. Covington County, 624 So.2d 1346, 1349 (Ala.1993). See also Green v. Alabama Power Co., 597 So.2d 1325 (Ala.1992); and Cain v. Sheraton Perimeter Park South Hotel, 592 So.2d 218 (Ala.1991). The defendants, however, point out that this Court has also indicated that there are circumstances under which the issue of proximate cause would properly be resolved as a matter of law. For example, in Ex parte Mobile Power & Light Co., 810 So.2d 756 (Ala.2001), the homeowners, whose house had been destroyed by a fire allegedly caused by faulty wiring, and their insurer sued the electrical contractor who had repaired the electrical service to the house approximately two years before the fire. Both the plaintiffs and the defendant presented expert witnesses, and the defendant's expert, Ted Blunt, testified that the electrical work he had inspected was correctly installed and that there was no breach of any applicable standard of care. George Casellas, the plaintiffs' expert, testified that the fire might have resulted from improper tightening of the connection bolts in the circuitry, and he also offered other scenarios in which intervening electrical work might have caused the fire. This Court stated: The trial court correctly relied on the testimony of Casellas and Blunt in entering the summary judgment for Mobile Power. Casellas's deposition and affidavit, taken in the light most favorable to Safeco, were speculative at best. Mobile Power was potentially responsible only under the first of Casellas's three possible scenarios. As for the second and third possibilities, no conceivable negligence by Mobile Power could have caused a mechanical failure of the screwed lug or a thermal shrinkage of the conductor inside the lug. Safeco presented no evidence indicating that the first possibility was any more probable than the other two. Furthermore, Blunt's deposition established that Mobile Power used proper lug torque during installation; that precluded the first of Casellas's three possible causes for the fire. The combined testimony of Casellas and Blunt failed to prove that the possibility of improper lug torque was more than conjecture. This Court has stated: There may be two or more plausible explanations as to how an event happened or what produced it; yet, if the evidence is without selective application to any one of them, they remain conjectures only. On the other hand, if there is evidence which points to any one theory of causation indicating a logical sequence of cause and effect, then there is a juridical basis for such a determination....' Southern Ry. [v. Dickson], supra, 211 Ala. [481] at 486, 100 So. [665] at 669 [(1924) ], and [Ex parte] Diversey Corp., supra, 742 So.2d [1250] at 1254 [(Ala.1999)]. 810 So.2d at 761. We conclude that the situation described in Ex parte Mobile Power & Light is not analogous to the instant case. Viewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the nonmovants, we note that Jones testified that Lenz-Ramseur had a duty to detect the improper fusing in the unit and to alert the proper parties of the potential problems that could result from the improper fusing. Moreover, Jones states that had Lenz-Ramseur alerted the proper parties of the fusing problem, the damage in this case  the fire  could have been avoided. Accordingly, the summary judgment for Lenz-Ramseur must be reversed.