Court Opinion

ID: 9553110
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:22:17.825832+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:29:43.267653
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
In this wrongful death action the court pronounces that an electric power generating company [OG&E or company] owes the highest degree of care to one who, as a trespasser upon the land not owned by the company, was electrocuted while climbing the company’s transmission-line tower. I cannot join its opinion.
The deceased, a fifteen-year old boy, climbed upon an unlighted OG&E transmission-line tower shortly after midnight. The tower was fifty feet high and stpod in a field owned by a third party who was not involved in this litigation.1 The boy was killed by electricity that arced toward him ■ from a high-voltage line or insulator when he reached the crossbar near the top of the tower.
The boy’s parents brought this negligence action against OG&E. They alleged that the company had failed to exercise the “high degree of care” it owed to their son by not properly maintaining its transmission-line tower and by its breach of certain mandatory safety standards. OG&E countered that it had complied with the applicable safety code, and that recovery was precluded both by the decedent’s status as trespasser and by his contributory negligence.
The trial court refused to instruct the jury the boy was a trespasser on OG&E’s transmission-line tower and the only duty of care owed him by OG&E was not to injure him wilfully or wantonly. Judgment was rendered below on a verdict for the parents, with an attribution of thirty-five percent of negligence to the deceased and sixty-five to OG&E. OG&E’s single claim of error is the trial judge’s refusal to give its requested instruction on the decedent’s trespasser status.
Although, in my view, OG&E’s requested charge did not correctly state the law that spells out its duty toward the decedent, the instructions given by the trial court are nonetheless fraught with error.2 Where, as here, a decisive issue is formed by the pleadings together with evidence adduced at trial, and is called to the attention of the court by a requested charge, the court has a duty, on its own motion, to set forth the rule of law that governs the tendered issue.3 The trial court’s error in informing the jury of the correct standard of care *489owed by OG&E doubtless prejudiced the company’s defense posture.4
Section 386 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts provides, in this case, the sole basis upon which tort liability may be imposed on OG&E, qua electric transmission company, for injury or death of an uninvited and unauthorized entrant upon its dangerous facility constructed upon the land of another. The critical components of recovery authorized under § 386 were neither tendered by the parties in their requested charge nor included in any of the court instructions.5
Section 386 fashions neither an “academic construct” nor a new norm of liability. It draws its essence — as other sections of the Restatement do — from pertinent appellate pronouncements6 on facts similar to those before us. Section 386 embodies the American common-law norms that apply under the circumstances of this case. If OG&E’s negligent conduct did fit the basic criteria of the § 386 tort liability — because OG&E had created, on the ‘premises of another, an artificial condition — here, a transmission-line tower — which it should have recognized as involving an unreasonable risk of harm to persons who might come upon the land and be imperiled by the dangerous condition,7 OG&E may, indeed, be answerable in damages to one like the decedent who was a trespasser vis-a-vis the landowner as well as an unauthorized entrant on OG&E’s tower. In short, for § 386 purposes the decedent’s status on the land and on the tower was immaterial. The duty owed by OG&E did not depend on decedent’s status but on the elements of § 386.
Because the single inference to be drawn here from the undisputed facts in the record is that the decedent was indeed a trespasser vis-a-vis the landowner — or, as I prefer to say it in this case, an unauthorized and uninvited entrant both on the land and the tower8 — it was incumbent *490upon the trial court to instruct the jury, in accordance with the § 386 requirements, that the highest degree of care was not applicable. That standard may be claimed against an electric power transmission or generating company only by one who does occupy the status of an invitee or licensee vis-a-vis the landowner or the facility operator.9
Although in view of § 386, OG&E could not defeat recovery by invoking the decedent’s trespasser status vis-a-vis itself or the landowner,10 it was clearly entitled to an ordinary-degree-of-care charge. Plaintiffs’ recovery for decedent’s wrongful death can be rested here only on OG&E’s § 386 tort liability for breach of ordinary care. The jury was not so instructed. It was charged that OG&E owed “the highest degree of care” to one who admittedly was neither a licensee nor an invitee in the locus in quo.
In short, I cannot accede to the court’s holding that OG&E, qua power-transmission company with a facility constructed upon the land of another, owes the highest degree of care to an unauthorized entrant on its tower and a trespasser vis-a-vis that land’s owner who proves OG&E’s noncompliance with some police power regulation. I would hold that (1) OG&E’s liability here is governed exclusively by the terms of § 386, Restatement (Second) of Torts and (2) because the decedent was not a licensee or invitee in the locus in quo, but an unauthorized and uninvited entrant, OG&E owed him, under the standards of § 386, no more than ordinary care.

. OG&E has but an easement in the locus in quo —the land on which the fatality in suit occurred. Easements are nonpossessory estates in the land of another. Restatement of Property § 450, comment (b) at p. 2903; Beetschen v. Shell Pipe Line Corp., 363 Mo. 751, 253 S.W.2d 785, 786 [1952],

. The instruction requested by OG&E stated: "You are instructed that the Plaintiffs’ Decedent, John 'Bo' Woodis, was a trespasser on the tower of the O.G.&E., and the only duty O.G.&E. owed to the deceased was to avoid wilfully or wantonly injuring him.”

. Mason v. McNeal, 187 Okl. 31, 100 P.2d 451, 452-453 [1939], cited in McCorkle v. Great Atlantic Ins. Co., Okl., 637 P.2d 583, note 3 at 586 [1981]; 12 O.S. 1981 § 578; Shelton v. Tapley, Okl., 329 P.2d 672, syllabus [1958].

. Pacific Ins. Co. of New York v. Frank, Okl., 452 P.2d 794, 797 [1969].

. Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 386, provides: “Any person, except the possessor of land or a member of his household or one acting on his behalf, who creates or maintains upon the land a structure or other artificial condition which he should recognize as involving an unreasonable risk of physical harm to others upon or outside of the land, is subject to liability for physical harm thereby caused to them, irrespective of whether they are lawfully upon the land, by the consent of the possessor or otherwise, or are trespassers as between themselves and the possessor." [emphasis supplied]

. For a recent application of § 386, see Escobedo v. Ward 255 Or. 85, 464 P.2d 698, 701 [1970].

. This is the only theory of tort liability on which the claim may be rested.

. I do not agree with the court that the decedent may be classified as a trespasser vis-a-vis OG&E. By varying the duty of care applicable to the three categories of entrants — trespasser, licensees and invitees — the common law affords the land occupier — a protected class of yore — a form of diminished responsibility in negligence for harm occasioned by defects in the premises. Neither historical antecedents nor modern policy considerations militate in favor of extending the common law’s trichotomous division of entrants to now water down the tort liability of non-possessors, such as OG&E in this case. See Marsh, The History and Comparative Law of Invitees, Licensees and Trespassers, (pt. 1 and 2), 69 L.Q.Rev. 182, 359-361 [1953]. Oklahoma has refused to apply the traditional occupier’s immunity rule to a defendant other than the occupier. See e.g., Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Bartmess, 181 Okl. 501, 76 P.2d 352 [1937], where the defendant, an owner of an oil lease, was held liable to an adjoining landowner whose cattle trespassed and were poisoned by ponds polluted by the defendant’s operations, and Earl W. Baker Utilities Co. v. Haney, 203 Okl. 91, 218 P.2d 621, 623-624 [1950], For a discussion of the occupier distinction, see Hughes, Duties to Trespassers: A Comparative Survey & Revaluation, 68 Yale L.J. 633 [1959] and Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 386.
Section 386 of Restatement (Second) of Torts reflects the common law’s rejection of the notion that the owner of a dangerous facility upon the land of another may claim the occupier's shield from general negligence. The distinction between liability of occupiers and that of non-possessors is well articulated in Ireland v. Complete Machinery & Equipment Co., 174 Misc. 91, 21 N.Y.S.2d 430 [1940], where § 386, Restatement (Second) of Torts, was under consideration. This section, which governs liability of nonpossessors [owners of nonpossessory interests in land] for conditions upon the premises "involving any unreasonable risk of physical harm to others", applies to all entrants, "irrespective of whether they are lawfully upon the *490land ..." In Ireland a hand pump was placed in an alley near a bank, at the request of the bank, for the purpose of pumping water out of its basement. The court held that § 386 did not apply and that the defendant-contractor, who was operating the pump when the plaintiff was injured, was entitled to the protection of the trespasser rule because he was operating the pump at the invitation and for the benefit of the landowner. Some courts have found that an occupier, who operates an inherently dangerous apparatus, may owe a duty of care to those who technically are trespassers. See Hughes, Duties to Trespassers: A Comparative Survey & Revaluation, supra at 640; Annot.: Status of Injured Adult as Trespasser on Land Not Owned by Electricity Supplier, As Affecting Its Liability for Injuries Inflicted on Him by Electric Wires it Maintains Thereon, 30 A.L.R.3rd 777 [1970].

. Rotramel v. Public Service Company, Okl., 546 P.2d 1015 [1976].

. Sutherland v. Saint Francis Hospital, Inc., Okl., 595 P.2d 780 [1979]. Under the common-law status classification system, the only duty owed a trespasser is to avoid injuring him wilfully or wantonly.