Court Opinion

ID: 9682481
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:11:52.081138+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:39.645196
License: Public Domain

STEPHENSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I am just not sure what the majority is driving at when it discusses when to delegate the interpretative function to the jury. I was not aware the jury had any interpretative function at all. Juries find facts from the evidence. It has always been the rule that the trial judge determines the law of the case from the evidence and instructs the jury accordingly. It has always been the function of the trial court to determine from the evidence if a case should go to the jury and the function of an appellate court to determine from the evidence whether the trial court has erred. I gather from the majority opinion we are being admonished not to interfere with current considerations of equity and common *391sense on the part of a jury. I reject this philosophy absolutely. To adopt the theory of the majority would result in abdication of traditional responsibilities of both the trial courts and appellate courts.
I believe the opinion of the Court of Appeals is proper, and the Court of Appeals did review the sufficiency of the evidence. The majority states the Court of Appeals “may have made findings of its own.” I do not read the Court of Appeals opinion that way; it simply stated the conduct here did not rise to the level of “wanton and reckless indifference.”
The second part begins by engaging in fact finding which, as far as I can tell, is not supported by the record.
The testimony of the employee who answered the call was that he smelled gas in the house, as Mrs. Horton did. He closed the damper in the fireplace and said the smell diminished to a slight odor. Where is the evidence that he “erroneously concluded that there was no gas leaking inside the house...”? It is more likely that the hot fireplace was pulling gas into the home from the outside, and closing the damper stopped this. There is no indication that use of the “explosive meter” would have revealed anything unusual at this time. After all, it was more than an hour after the initial inspection that the explosion occurred.
The opinion then makes a finding of fact as to the origin of the explosion. I agree with the conclusion that the gas accumulated in the attic, but in order for the coals in the fireplace to have caused the explosion, there would have had to have been an explosive mixture in the house itself. We were told there were no serious injuries from the explosion and no serious burns.
This fact alone indicates ignition in the attic instead of the house proper. A gas explosion is a flash flame which, if it occurred in the house, would have in all probability burned to death each member of the family.
With this scenario, the majority refers to the testimony of Murphy as the most damaging. As inspector of the Public Service Commission, he had made certain recommendations to management. He had a model plan which he submitted to the company. The record does not reveal that this plan was other than a personal idea on Murphy’s part. According to the record, the company was in compliance with all pertinent safety rules and regulations of the Public Service Commission. My opinion is that all of this testimony by Murphy is incompetent, and further I do not see how a series of rules would have prevented the accident. If, as it seems most likely, the explosion occurred in the attic, use of the “explosive meter” would not have detected any appreciable amount of gas in the house. The only way an explosive mixture of gas could have been found was in checking the attic. This was not done in the mistaken belief that the exhaust fan vented to the outside instead of into the attic.
There is no question that this state of facts authorized the trial court to submit the case on ordinary negligence. Even the majority does not say that the employee at the scene was guilty of gross negligence, only reasonably arguable that it could have been considered so by the jury, whatever that means. It is absurd to say that the employee who answered the call could have been any more than ordinarily negligent. The other employees outside who did not cut off the gas or order evacuation did not know of gas in the house, so far as I can tell from the record, so I fail to see the significance of this statement.
Then the opinion proceeds to invent a new standard for gross negligence. We go from asserted negligence of employees at the scene who are presumed to have known of a dangerous condition to the policy and procedures of the company in training its employees in order to make out a submissi-ble case on gross negligence. Then we have the novel theory of adding together several ordinary negligence factors to make out a case of gross negligence.
The majority then adopts with approval Brown v. Riner, Wyoming, and lifts out of context a sentence from the opinion. That *392opinion concerned a guest-passenger automobile accident, and the several acts were all in one, speeding, bizarre driving, ending in hitting an abutment, and drinking beer and wine. That is a far cry from the circumstances here. The majority opinion places this jurisdiction alone in formulating a standard for gross negligence.
If this case involves gross negligence, then a multitude of eases not ordinarily thought of as gross-negligence cases will qualify.
As to the third part, I do not care to express in this case my views on whether there should be a change in the law of punitive damages.
Accordingly, I dissent.