Court Opinion

ID: 9741155
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:50:25.012471+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:22.607068
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.
(dissenting). The lead opinion combines the separate questions of duty, negligence, and comparative negligence, and concludes prematurely on woefully inadequate summary disposition records and incomplete factual assessment that Detroit Edison could not have been expected to do anything to protect the injured and deceased workmen who, further, could have avoided injury had they been more alert and careful.
Koehler v Detroit Edison Co, 383 Mich 224, 231; 174 NW2d 827 (1970), although it speaks in negligence terminology, was decided at a time when any contributory negligence of the injured person precluded recovery. Now, the injured person’s comparative negligence reduces, but does not preclude, recovery. The lead opinion defines duty to include in the calculus the fault of the particular injured person, here a worker, holding, in effect, that Detroit Edison has no duty to the comparatively negligent.
This redefinition of “duty” is brought about by asking, not whether injury to some person (worker— skilled or not — or nonworker) from unintentional contact with uninsulated electrical lines is foreseeable under ordinarily foreseeable circumstances, but rather whether negligent contact with uninsulated lines by a skilled worker should have been foreseen. *680The lead opinion then conclusorily responds in the negative, ignoring that most injuries, including most workplace injuries, even of skilled workers, could be avoided if the injured person was at all times alert and careful and never made a mistake due to fatigue, momentary lapse, distractions, or other cause.
In Schultz v Consumers Power Co, 443 Mich 445, 452-454; 506 NW2d 175 (1993), this Court said:
Those engaged in transmitting electricity axe bound to anticipate ordinary use of the area surrounding the lines and to appropriately safeguard the attendant risks. The test to determine whether a duty was owed is not whether the company should have anticipated the particular act from which the injury resulted, but whether it should have foreseen the probability that injury might result from any reasonable activity done on the premises for business, work, or pleasure. . . .
Where service wires erected and maintained by an electric utility company carry a powerful electric current, so that persons coming into contact with or proximity to them are likely to suffer serious injury or death, the company must exercise reasonable care to protect the public from danger. The degree of care required is that used by prudent persons in the industry, under like conditions and proportionate to the dangers involved, to guard against reasonably foreseeable or anticipated contingencies.[1]
*681The Court concluded that “a power company has a duty to reasonably install its power lines so as to safeguard the public from foreseeable injuries.” Id. at 458.
I would hold on the authority of Schultz that Detroit Edison had a duty to exercise due care to protect against reasonably foreseeable contact by workers, skilled and unskilled, as well as homeowners, with uninsulated lines.2
Clearly Detroit Edison is not required, as its counsel and amicus curiae extravagantly argue, to post guards twenty-four hours a day along over thirty thousand miles of uninsulated electrical lines. Nor should it be required to bury underground electrical lines at prohibitive cost and resulting excessive increase in utility costs to consumers, businesses, and others.
The lead opinion speaks of the cost of recognizing a duty in these three cases. The record indicates that temporary sleeves could be installed on wires near construction sites or streamers could be hung from uninsulated lines during the times of construction involved in Bohnert and Parcher. In both cases, Detroit Edison was made aware, well in advance of *682the commencement of construction, that there would be the kind of construction that would bring to the site heavy equipment with cranes and booms. Detroit Edison had ample time to install plastic sleeves or streamers or otherwise temporarily mark these uninsulated lines.
The record is silent whether installing temporary sleeves, streamers, or other temporary measures are practical and effective, and is also silent concerning the cost of such installations in the instant cases.3
The record contains nothing about the frequency of the kind of accidents that occurred in these cases; how many homeowners, maintenance, construction, delivery men are injured or die as the result of accidental contact with uninsulated electrical lines in a year, two years, or five years. The record is silent concerning the number of times a year Detroit Edison might be called upon to install temporary sleeves, streamers, or take other temporary measures, and the cost of doing so.
The lead opinion, absent such record evidence, finds that the potential cost to Detroit Edison is so great that it relieves it of any duty to safeguard a “skilled” worker who knows of the risk and by mistake encounters an uninsulated line. No thought is given to other alternatives. This Court could appropriately suggest that Detroit Edison seek the approval of the Public Service Commission to assess the cost of temporary sleeves, streamers, or other measures against the business or other consumer of electricity as part of the installation cost of the new electrical *683service to the newly constructed structure. It might persuasively appear from a more complete record and thorough analysis that a different result might be required.
A different question would be presented if Detroit Edison were not aware of the new construction and had no time to take temporary measures in the areas where cranes and booms might encounter uninsulated lines.
Groncki does not involve new construction. I agree with my dissenting colleague that there is need for further factual development before this Court could properly consider and decide that all reasonable persons would conclude that Detroit Edison should not have been required to do more to safeguard against the risk of mishaps of the kind that here occurred.4
Whenever this Court rules as a matter of law that there is a duty or an absence of duty, it makes a policy assessment regarding the allocation of risk of loss, sometimes imposing it entirely on the injured person, other times transferring it to the defendant. However the Court decides, it has a choice and the choice is in a sense legislative. The Legislature has the last word, but until it acts, the Court’s decision, either for or against the recognition of liability, is judicial lawmaking. In my opinion, the Court’s obligation is to hold *684that Detroit Edison, like every other seller of potentially dangerous products, has a duty to take reasonable — not ruinous — precautions to protect the public from known, and thus foreseeable, risks of harm.

 The Court continued:
Compliance with the NESC of an industry-wide standard is not an absolute defense to a claim of negligence. While it may be evidence of due care, conformity with industry standards is not conclusive on the question of negligence where a reasonable person engaged in the industry would have taken additional precautions under the circumstances. Owens v Allis-Chalmers Corp, 414 Mich 413, 422-423; 326 NW2d 372 (1982); 2 Restatement Torts, 2d, § 295A, p 62. An argument on the basis of industry standards, therefore, goes to the question whether a defendant breached its duty of ordinary care, not whether a duty existed. If the plaintiff can convince a jury that a reasonably prudent company would have *681taken auxiliary measures beyond those required by industry standards, then the jury is clearly at liberty to find that the defendant breached its duty, regardless of the industry’s guidelines. [Id. at 456.]

 Because homeowners as well as workers are entitled to maintain an action, the concern addressed in Funk v General Motors Corp, 392 Mich 91, 112; 220 NW2d 641 (1974), is not present. See also Smith v Allendale Mut Ins Co, 410 Mich 685, 739; 303 NW2d 702 (1981).

 There was deposition testimony from a Detroit Edison employee indicating that the cost of moving lines was not prohibitive.

 In Groncki and Bohnert, the uninsulated lines were less than fifteen feet from the building — the width of a small room.
One can visualize other cases where the uninsulated lines are hundreds or a greater number of feet from any facility and are hung at great height, and there is no indication that there will be construction activity in the area. That is not the situation in these cases.