Court Opinion

ID: 9443503
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:23:30.313397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:31.130086
License: Public Domain

JOPINSEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
On the previous appeal of this case, Gas Service Co. v. London & Lancashire Ins. Co., 8 Cir., 188 F.2d 404, we appraised the Missouri common law as imposing no general duty upon a gas company to inspect or maintain the service pipes located on the property of a customer and belonging to him. Gas companies in that State therefore would not be chargeable with negligence for injuries to a customer or his property, from explosion caused by a defective condition of such pipes, except (1) where the company otherwise had come to have a duty of inspection, as a matter of contractual or statutory obligation, and had neglected to carry out that duty; or (2) where it had directly engaged in some task related to the condition of the service pipes and had not properly executed that task; or (3) where it had had notice of a defect in the service pipes and had not taken the necessary steps to prevent the danger from remaining operative.
It is the first of these exceptions which is of concern to me here. The proceedings had in the trial court after our remand developed that the gas company had promulgated and filed with the Public Service Commission, under authority of the Missouri statutes, some regulations covering incidents of its service and relationship to customers. Among these regulations was the following: “Where gas service pipes from the curb line to the meter are not installed by the company, the work is to be done by a competent and fully qualified plumber. Upon the completion of service lines so installed, an air pressure test of five pounds per square inch is to be placed upon the pipes and connections up to and including the meter cock, and the pressure test is to be deemed satisfactory if this pressure is held without perceptible loss for a period of fifteen minutes. This test is to be made by the plumber installing the gas service line and witnessed by a representative of the company. * *”
I think that this language, which the company itself formulated, reasonably is entitled to and should be read as a holding out on the part of the company, to a community generally, to an immediate neighborhood, and to any customer, that they could rely upon any new installation of service pipes not being put to use by it for the transmission of gas from a curb line to a meter (the gas during that stage, of course, being still the property of the company, and the service pipes thus being made to serve as a facility for its property) without its requiring the plumber *788making the installation to subject the pipes to an air pressure test fdr leakage and itself witnessing the test, so that it would personally know that the test both^ was made and was satisfactory. So far as a customer was concerned, the filed regulation constituted a term or basis of service, and the assurance or promise contained in it therefore necessarily had the status of a duty or obligation.
The trial court so assumptively recognized, as its memorandum on denial of plaintiff’s motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or in the alternative for a new trial indicates. The court however took the position' that, even though this was true, there further existed in the filed regulations a provision, which imposed a concurrent and equally controlling duty upon the customer, that had not been performed, and which therefore left the customer without any cause of action for negligence of the gas company. This provision was one that “The piping and connections owned by the customer, or on the customer’s premises, including the customer’s service line, * * * shall be maintained in a safe, efficient and proper operating condition by and at the expense of the customer.”
The majority opinion declares that it is unable to say that the trial court was wrong in its conclusion. To me, however, the holding of the trial court, that the gas company’s duty to have a ’test made for leakage, before a new service line should be put to use in transmitting gas from the curb line to the meter, and the customer’s duty to maintain such a service line in proper condition throughout its use are concurrent and overlapping duties, and that the latter therefore in effect cancelled out the former as a basis for liability, seems clearly erroneous.
In the first place, that construction makes the obligation of the gas company under the regulations devoid of any practical and legal content — a construction which, unless compelled, is no more entitled to be made of such regulations than of contracts or statutes. Not only is such a construction of the regulations not here compelled but, beyond this, I think it is both an unnatural and unreasonable one as well. It is difficult for me to see how a duty to make a preliminary inspection or test of an intended service line before it is put to use is an overlap of or in conflict with a duty to maintain such a service line in condition while it is in use.
In technical concept, the pipes could not constitute a gas service line, unless and until they were in fact used to carry gas. And that use, with its conversion of the pipes into the status of an actual service line, the gas company, under its regulations as- it had itself formulated them, was not entitled to make as against a customer, until it had carried out its duty or obligation of having the pipes precedingly tested for possible air leakage. Only after this had been done and the pipes were in use as a service line, would the customer’s duty of maintenance begin.
This view gives practical meaning and legal significance to both provisions of the regulations. Its effect is to treat the provision for testing as constituting a modification, in the gas company’s relationship to its customers, of the general lack of duty of a gas company under Missouri common law to either inspect or maintain, to the extent of imposing upon the company the duty to have an initial air pressure test made for possible leakage in new installations, before the pipes are put by it into gas service-line use, while at the same time recognizing the provision for maintenance by the customer as being intended to preserve unaffected the customer’s duty to maintain the service line after it has been so placed in use.
As I have pointed out, the trial court refused to set aside the judgment in favor of the gas company solely upon the ground, as stated in its memorandum, that, under the regulations, “plaintiff’s assignor (the customer) had the ‘duty’ to maintain said line in safe condition at the very time defendant (the gas company) had the duty to inspect * * This view of the regulations was, I think, for the reasons which I have stated above, clearly erroneous. The majority of the court here, however, at*789tempt to uphold the result reached by the trial court upon other grounds also. Thus they say — ununderstandably to me — that the provision of the regulations as to testing, which I have quoted, “places upon the property owner the duty of making the pressure test.” They further call attention to another provision in the regulations that “Gas services are to be constructed of new and first class material” and declare as a matter of law (which could hardly properly be done) that a connection in the service line, which, while not conforming to the standard normally required by the building inspector of the City of Joplin was nevertheless approved by him in the war situation, was not “first class material” and so violated this provision of the regulations. And finally they say that there would be no liability against the gas company because of another provision in the regulations that “All parts of a gas supply system up to and including the meter connections, when installed by a gas fitter or plumber on the premises of a prospective customer, shall be reported to and inspected by the company before it is concealed and before it is connected with the main or service pipe which contains unmeasured gas”- — no report having been made to the gas company by the plumber before the pipes were concealed.
But all of this overlooks the fact that whatever may or may not have been p-re--cedingly done, the gas company thereafter saw fit to connect the installation to its main and to its meter and to turn gas into the pipes without first causing a pressure test to be made of the line. This pressure test it owed the duty of making, even though everything was of first class material and even though the installation had been reported to it for inspection before it was concealed. In fact the view might well be taken that the duty to inspect the installation before concealment was just as much a modification of the gas company’s common law lack of duty to inspect as its obligation to cause the service line to be subjected to an air pressure test before the introduction of any gas therein, and that it had no right to turn gas into the service line and ignore its duty to inspect merely because the installation had not been reported to it for physical inspection before concealment. The -regulations contained an express reservation of “the right to refuse to connect to its -main any service pipes not passing inspection”, and any service pipes which it had not had the opportunity to examine could certainly hardly be said to have passed its inspection, unless it chose to rely upon the plumber’s work, as it did here in proceeding to make the connection to its main and meter, and so waived its right of personal inspection and would be chargeable accordingly.
The controlling considerations here, however, are that, regardless of what had precedingly happened, the explosion would not have occurred if the gas company had not connected up the installation to its main and turned gas into the service line; that it had no right so to do until it had subjected the service line to a pressure test for possible leakage, whether from defective material, improper workmanship or any other cause; that had it made such a pressure test as the regulations required the defect which caused the explosion admittedly would have been revealed and the explosion would not have occurred; and that therefore, no matter what had previously been done or not been done, the immediate proximate cause of the explosion was the turning on of gas into the service line withtout having had the leakage test made.
For purposes of this dissent, I have not deemed it necessary to consider whether the failure of the gas company to have the pressure test made, as a violation of the filed regulations, would be entitled to be held to be negligence per se or merely to be found to bp negligence as a fact, since in either event the judgment would have to be reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings. That question would be a matter for resolution by the trial court as one of Missouri law.