Court Opinion

ID: 9445006
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:18:10.794136+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:05.909699
License: Public Domain

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge, with whom WILBUR K. MILLER and DANAHER, Circuit Judges, join
(dissenting).
I
In Respect to the Contractor
We do not find in the question we must decide the abstruse legal problems found there by our brethren. We would affirm the District Court, because we agree with the trial judge upon the simple proposition that counsel for the plaintiffs failed to state a case.
The case sounds in tort. If it does not rest upon tort it is barred by the statute of limitations. The tort upon which it rests is negligence. The negligence is alleged to have been committed by the contractor which in 1942 repaired a cast-iron railing outside a dwelling. The railing served safely the people en*478tering and leaving the house for seven years after the repair job. It gave way in 1949. The trial court directed a verdict for the defendants upon the completion of the opening statement of plaintiffs’ counsel.
This opening statement was not an ordinary, casual, preliminary sketch, designed merely to familiarize the jury with the nature of the case. Counsel was put on notice, prior to making the statement, that a motion to dismiss would be made when he had finished. So he knew he must state his case if he had one. After the statement and the motion for a directed verdict, and before ruling, the trial judge asked whether counsel had anything to add.1 The attorney replied he did not think so except for several matters relating to the lease, which he then stated. We are assured, therefore, that he stated the maximum his facts would allow.
The statement of counsel for the plaintiffs was to the following effect:
The person injured was a tenant in the house and had lived there for sixteen years before the accident. The front entrance to the house was up a flight of cast-iron steps with a cast-iron railing. This railing gave way in 1942. This same tenant or her husband reported the matter to the landlord, and the landlord employed defendant contractor, Gichner, to make the repairs. Repairs were made. In 1949 Helen Hanna was going down the steps and grasped the railing. It gave way, and she fell and was injured.
The railing was secured at the top and bottom steps by newel posts. Inside the posts were anchor rods secured on the underside of the step. Before 1942 the steps rattled and tilted. Counsel for plaintiffs said: “We will show you, ladies and gentlemen, that what caused this railing to give way was that the anchor rod inside this newel post rusted out.” He said the contractor, Gichner, in 1942 did several things which brought about that result. At that time the anchor rod had rusted out and there was an accumulation of rust on the steps under the newel post. Gichner put in a new rod but did not remove the rust. Counsel said plaintiffs would show that to replace an anchor rod in that fashion is not good iron construction and exposed the rod to rust. The footing for the riser on the bottom step was gone in 1942; Gichner did nothing about that, so the step did not bear on the support. The back edge of the bottom tread was broken off, so that the step sagged and pulled on the newel post. This made it subject to erosion and “it would be inevitable that it would give way”. Plaintiffs would show that under good construction practice a support should have been built so that the step would not sag. Further, the railing was held in place by a collar, which was broken; Gichner did not replace the collar but welded the rail into the collar, leaving a sizable hole. Rain water would run into this hole, through the railing, and into the newel post.
Counsel for plaintiffs said: “Now we will show you, ladies and gentlemen, those four items of what was done, and what was improperly done, back in 1942. We will show you, as I said, that they led just as inexorably as death itself to the collapse of this rail in 1949.” Counsel went on to describe Mrs. Hanna’s injuries, which were severe. He concluded: “That negligence is this: Annie Fletcher, the landlord, undertook to have those premises repaired. We claim they were repaired in a negligent manner, that these steps and this railing constituted an unknown danger, unless they were properly constructed and properly repaired, because people would invariably rely on that railing in going down the steps crossing the areaway.”
Counsel then described the injuries, and thus concluded the ¡statement.
Whether the trial judge properly directed a verdict on the conclusion of this statement depends on whether a case in negligence had been stated. To make a *479case it was necessary for plaintiffs to show that the contractor was negligent and that its negligence was the proximate cause of the injury.
One does not state a case of negligence merely by adjectives or by rhetorical summations. It is easy enough to aver that a defendant did not do what a prudent man should have done, but such a declaration is not enough to state a case. Negligence must be made out by a recitation of facts. What facts did the plaintiff say he would prove? — not what descriptive phrases did his lawyer use. Counsel in the case at bar said this railing gave way because the anchor rod rusted out. The maximum of his claim was that the railing rusted out. But the facts he recited showed that for seven years following the repair job the railing stood, in constant service, out-of-doors, as part of the entrance to a house, in sun, rain and snow, cold and heat, freezing and scorching, without breaking or falling or causing injury to anybody. There were seven years of wear and tear by constant use, seven years of the destructive forces of the weather working on a piece of cast iron. For seven years the railing was safe.
This is not a case in which an object supposed to withstand certain stresses collapsed when it was subjected to such stresses. This railing endured for seven years the use for which it was designed. No claim is made that the strain under which it collapsed was any different from that which it had withstood all those years. The railing simply wore out from the use and the weather.
The fact of seven years’ safe use made a strong initial case that reasonable care had been exercised in the repair.2
3 This outstanding fact faced plaintiffs when they attempted to state a case of negligence against the contractor and when they sought to establish that the negligence was the proximate cause of the injury. Their problem was to assert facts which would show that the collapse of the railing in 1949 was directly, without intermediate cause, the result of negligence in 1942.
This railing was made of cast iron. Cast iron rusts, and especially does it rust when exposed to weather and to wear. Counsel declared that the repairs “led just as inexorably as death itself to the collapse of this rail in 1949.” But weather and wear alone lead just as inexorably to the collapse of a cast-iron stair rail. The critical problem was a matter of time. The sine quo non of plaintiffs’ case was that the collapse in seven years was so much sooner than the normal inevitable disintegration that negligence in the repair work was shown. What was the normal expected life of such a railing under such conditions? Was it so much longer than seven years that the collapse at the end of seven years showed negligence in the construction? The obvious requirement for making a case of negligence upon the basic facts stated was to show that, had the railing been properly repaired in 1942, it would have lasted substantially longer than seven years. This was the very heart of plaintiffs’ case. But no word in the statement anticipated proof of how long the railing should have lasted. The case presented in the statement was on the bare isolated assertions that the work in 1942 was not “good” construction and the rail rusted out in seven years. That was all.
Moreover, in the face of the fact of seven years of safe service, another es*480sential of plaintiffs’ case was the maintenance of the railing — the painting, oiling or scraping — necessary to keep it in repair. This sort of facility obviously must be kept in repair, protected, just as a house or a machine must be. Merely to show the railing rusted out in seven years would not prove that a repairman that many years ago was negligent. The contractor on that job was not liable for a subsequent failure of maintenance or upkeep. An essential element of plaintiffs’ case was that the railing had received during the seven years the normal maintenance necessary to keep it in serviceable condition. No word on that subject was proffered in this case. It was a fatal lack.
Counsel for plaintiffs said he would show the repair work by this contractor was not “good” construction. The established standard for measuring negligence is what a reasonably prudent man would do, and the evidence is what is customary in the trade. Counsel did not propose this standard or this proof; he proposed a new standard and a different one, and a new and different proof. The established methods are factual and are proved as factual matters. The standard proposed here is purely a matter of opinion — whether in a witness’s opinion this was good construction; not whether it was customary or what a reasonably prudent contractor would have done. The ruling of this court means, in ultimate effect, that a plaintiff can get to a jury if he presents testimony that the given construction, or practice, was not, in the opinion of the witness, “good” construction or practice. We do not agree with so fundamental a change in the establishment of negligence.
What we have said about negligence applies with even greater force to the other phase of plaintiffs’ case, proximate cause. Plaintiffs were required to show facts which tended to prove that the repair work in 1942 was the cause, and the proximate cause, of the collapse of the railing in 1949. Faced with the fact of seven years of safe service, seven years of innumerable events and incidents, weather and wear, they needed to show some connecting relation, some negative of the compelling force of the seven years of safe use. The principles have been elaborately discussed by the authorities. Some advocate a “But for” rule, that but for the act of the defendant the damage would not have occurred. Some state a “Probable Consequence” rule, that a wrongdoer is liable for probable consequences only.3 In any event causation is the true ultimate essential in this phase of a plaintiff’s case, and the causation is a factual matter. Plaintiffs in the case at bar faced a fact of seven years of safe use after the alleged wrongful act. They were required to show a causal connection. They had to negative that long, safe use. Viewing the matter under one statement of the rule, if collapse under the given stress at the end of seven years’ use, without normal repair meantime, would have occurred in any event due to wear and weather, the repair work in 1942 cannot be regarded as the proximate cause of the failure. Plaintiffs had to span that gap with some factual showing. Or, viewing the matter from the standpoint of the other rule, the contractor was not liable unless collapse at the end of seven years’ use was a probable consequence of his work. Plaintiffs were under necessity of presenting facts which showed that as of 1942 the collapse in 1949 was a probable consequence of the work. Plaintiffs offered no factual data on the factual problem of causation. There were rhetorical conclusions, but no word of factual data to span the gap of seven years appears in their statement. Surely one does not show proximate cause, or any cause, by showing merely that a cast-iron railing was repaired in 1942, the work was not “good” construction, and seven years later it rusted out. The plaintiffs simply failed to state a case of proximate cause, in my judgment.
*481Cases like the one at bar present problems not found in the ordinary negligence case. The fact that an article has served its appointed purpose for a long period of time may not in itself conclusively bar all claims of negligence against the original contractor. But neither may a plaintiff skip backward over intervening years and intervening elements at work and hold a repairman liable for the normal results of seven years of wear and deterioration. Plaintiffs’ counsel was given full opportunity to state his case. To succeed it was necessary that he do more than point to the fact of repair and the fact of collapse and assert merely that the repair was not good iron construction.
It may be that plaintiffs stated a case against an insurer. The fact of the work, plus the fact of the collapse, may well make a case of liability upon an insurance, although even in such a case the seven years of safe service might be a bar. But this contractor was not an insurer. There is no law that makes a contractor an insurer. This case had to be made in negligence, and that is a different problem. It seems to us that the court, in the present opinion, ignores the difference.
There is much substance and sound sense in the cases which have dealt with this problem in the past. A study might well begin with Huset v. J. I. Case Threshing Mach. Co.4 and the opinion written by Circuit Judge Sanborn. Originally there was a general rule, which achieved almost universal acceptance in England and this country, that a contractor was not liable to third parties for negligence. The premise was non-privity of contract. But exceptions arose and also came to be universally accepted. One such exception recognized many years ago was, as stated in Huset, that an act of negligence by a manufacturer or contractor which is imminently and inherently dangerous is actionable. In MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co.5 then Associate Judge Cardozo wrote that liability of the manufacturer rests upon the principle that he ought to be liable for negligence if the article is reasonably certain to place life and limb in peril if negligently manufactured.6 In MacPherson the court had before it an automobile wheel made of wood. The wood was defective, and the wheel collapsed. But the wood was defective when it was put in the wheel; it was liable to collapse from the moment of its first use. We do not have such a case before us. To be sure, a railing alongside a stairway may be a dangerous thing, and, if it were of defective material or so defectively made that it collapsed when put to use, we might have a case comparable to MacPherson. But in our case the railing merely wore out, rusted out in the course of time and usage; it did not collapse when put to its intended use. The problem which was in MacPherson is simply not here, and this court’s desire to follow that case does not justify its conclusion in the case at bar.
The latest exhaustive treatment of the problem seems to be in the opinion of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in Carter v. Yardley & Co.7 That case involved a bottle of perfume, into which some harmful ingredient had found its way so that when plaintiff Carter applied it to her skin she was burned. The case in no way resembles the one before us. But even in that case the court was careful to point out: “This statement of the principle conforms to the rule that a failure to take special precaution against a danger that is only remotely possible is not negligence.” 8 In the case at bar the danger against which care is alleged to have been necessary was that the railing would wear out in *482seven years — upkeep during the seven years being omitted from consideration. Under the rule of even such a case as Carter negligence was not shown in plaintiffs’ case here. Many cases similar to MacPherson and Carter can be found, but they are not the present case as we see it.
In our view the court in its present opinion unnecessarily goes much too far. Whether the opinion says so or not, the decision upon the facts involved establishes a rule that a person, not privy to a contract, injured by a product of a contractor or manufacturer, can go to a jury upon showing merely that the original, manufacture or construction was not “good”, that in the course of time and use the article wore out and after some years collapsed because of the final deterioration of a part which might have been constructed or manufactured in a different manner. And this without alleging or proving that the article would have lasted longer had it been made differently, or that the article was kept in good repair, or any other factual connection between the work and the injury, or even that the customary practice in the trade was not followed or that the contractor failed to exercise the care a reasonably prudent man would exercise in view of the fact that the article would normally and inevitably wear out sometime. This, to us, is revolutionary, and we believe it unsound. It makes a contractor or manufacturer an insurer, it makes him liable in the jury room for conditions arising during a long interim period of safe use, for a condition over which he has no control and no power to remedy. It lays manufacturers and contractors open to the caprice of juries, under the pressure of dramatic injuries, in a field of the law in which courts have heretofore been careful to subject manufacturers to a sound rule of liability but not to throw them open to claims by any user at any time without direct and specific showing. The necessity, as a matter of public policy, of reasonable limitations' upon this liability has always heretofore impressed the courts.
Finally we come to the rule which governed the trial judge in acting upon the' motion. In Tobin v. Pennsylvania R. Co.® we quoted from the Restatement:9
10
“‘e. Function of trial court. If there is no legislative enactment covering the circumstances of a particular case and there is no decision of an appellate court which establishes whether particular conduct is or is not negligent, a trial judge may withdraw a case from a jury whenever the jury could not reasonably find the defendant’s conduct to be negligent.’ ”
We then said:
. “The rule stated in' the Restatement of the Law of Torts is almost identical in terms with the general . rule of the District of Columbia concerning motions for directed verdicts.”
It seems to us clear that, had plaintiffs gone to trial and proved only what they said they would prove, the jury could not reasonably have found, on the basis of those facts alone, that the contractor’s conduct was negligent. We agree with the trial judge.
II
In Respect to the Landlord
We would affirm as to the landlord, because no factual case of negligence was made out against the contractor. Since the contractor’s negligence is the only factual basis upon which liability of the landlord is premised, the whole case falls.
The court discusses Bailey v. Zlotnick11 and Bowles v. Mahoney.12 The Bailey case held that, where it is the tenant’s duty to repair but the landlord does in fact repair, the landlord is under a du*483ty not to create an unsafe condition. In the case at bar the unsafe condition had existed long before the repair work was done in 1942. The repairs then made did not create a defective condition; they remedied an existing condition. The remedy was effective for seven years. So the landlord was not liable as of 1942, under the doctrine of Bailey. The 1949 defect grew gradually over the years due to rust. Bowles held that where a landlord has no duty to repair he is not liable for negligence in failing to repair. This landlord had no duty to repair. So he was not liable for the defective condition which developed from 1942 to 1949. Alternatively, therefore, we would affirm as to the landlord upon the basis of Bailey and Bowles.
BASTIAN, Circuit Judge,
having entered the judgment appealed from while a member of the District Court, took no part in the hearing or consideration of this appeal.

. See McGovern v. Hitt, 62 App.D.C. 33, 64 F.2d 156 (D.C.Cir. 1933), certiorari denied 290 U.S. 637, 54 S.Ct. 54, 78 L.Ed. 554 (1933).

. See, e. g., Ford Motor Co. v. Wolber, 32 F.2d 18 (7 Cir. 1929), certiorari deniod 280 U.S. 565, 50 S.Ct. 25, 74 L.Ed. 619 (1929); Dillingham v. Chevrolet Motor Co., 17 F.Supp. 615 (D.C.W.D.Okl.1936); Auld v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 261 App.Div. 918, 25 N.Y.S.2d 491 (1941), affirmed 288 N.Y. 515, 41 N. E.2d 927 (1942); Jamison v. Reda Pump Co., 190 Okl. 593, 126 P.2d 71 (1942); Miller v. Davis & Averill, 137 N.J.L. 671, 61 A.2d 253 (1948); Gorman v. Murphy Diesel Co., 3 Terry 149, 42 Del. 149, 29 A.2d 145 (1942); Howard v. Redden, 93 Conn. 604, 107 A. 509, 7 A.L.R. 198 (1919). Cf. De Salvo v. Stanley-Mark-Strand Corporation, 281 N.Y. 333, 23 N. E.2d 457 (1939). But see Hale v. Depaoli, 33 Cal.2d 228, 201 P.2d 1, 13 A.L.R.2d 183 (1948).

. See Smith, Legal Cause in Actions of Tort, 25 Harv.L.Rev. 103, 106, 114 (1911); McLaughlin, Proximate Cause, 39 Harv.L.Rev. 149,155 (1925).

. 120 F. 865, 61 L.R.A. 303 (8 Cir. 1903).

. 217 N.Y. 382, 111 N.E. 1050, L.R.A. 1916F, 696 (1916).

. He also wrote upon the subject in his The Growth of the Law (Yale Univ. Press 1924), p. 77.

. 319 Mass. 92, 64 N.E.2d 693, 164 A.L.R. 559 (1946).

. Id., 64 N.E.2d at page 696.

. 69 App.D.C. 262, 266, 100 F.2d 435, 439 (D.C.Cir.1938), certiorari denied 306 U.S. 640, 59 S.Ct. 488, 83 L.Ed.,1040 (1939).

. Restatement, Torts § 285, Comment.

. 80 U.S.App.D.C. 117, 149 F.2d 505, 162 A.L.R. 1108 (D.C.Cir.1945).

. 91 U.S.App.D.C. 155, 202 F.2d 320 (D.C.Cir.1952), certiorari denied 344 U.S. 935, 73 S.Ct. 505, 97 L.Ed. 719 (1953).