Court Opinion

ID: 9447622
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:39:29.881232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:06.816403
License: Public Domain

WOODROUGH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The question presented on this appeal is whether a costly accident suffered by the defendant highway construction contractors at 3:30 o’clock on the afternoon *916of August 23rd, 1957 was covered by the liability policy then in force issued to them by the Aetna insurance company. Among their equipment the contractors had a tool used to break up land to a substantial depth for grading called a “ripper” and although the insuring clause of the policy agreed “to pay * * * all sums which the insured shall become legally obligated to pay as damages because of injury to or destruction of property * * * caused by accident” a clause “k” of the policy excludes from its coverage “injury * * * to pipes * * * below the surface of the ground if such injury is caused by and occurs during the use of mechanical equipment for the purpose of grading of land * * * ”.
Immediately prior to the accident an employee of the contractors was using the ripper to grade land immediately adjacent to an area where an underground pipe line used for transporting oil crossed the highway. The contractors’ employee was informed of and knew the area where the pipe line was located and it was not his purpose to, and he did not intend to, and he did not in fact use the ripper to grade the land in that area above the pipe. He desired, however, to use it for the purpose of grading land on the other side of the pipe line area and the accident occurred while he was transporting the ripper across the pipe line area.
Before he entered that area he raised the tooth of the ripper to the safety, inoperative, position above the surface of the ground so that the mechanical equipment could not be “used for the purpose of grading land”, but whether he was negligent in not raising the tooth as high as he should have, or whether the ground was so rough that the movement in transportation threw the machine out of position and caused its tooth to enter the ground is not clear. The tooth did, however, make an unintended penetration of the ground solely as the result of accident and it ruptured the oil pipe.
It was the kind of accident the insurance covered — a happening not intended and not to be expected. The exclusion from the coverage by “k” so far as relevant here applied reasonably only to an injury to underground pipe caused by the use of the ripper for the purpose of grading land. It applied when the employee was using the tool to grade on either side of the pipe line area. Its terms forbid applying it to deny the insurance where the user put the tool into an inoperative position and was merely transporting the machine over land he did not purpose to grade with it.
It is noted that the conjunctive “and” is used in “k” so that it makes no exclusion from coverage unless the injury occurs not only during the use of the tool for grading, but also by the use of it for the purpose. Which plainly means that the operator must purpose or intend to be digging with the tool and not merely be transporting it when the accident happens. Happening as it did the accident was covered by the insurance policy.