Court Opinion

ID: 9687242
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:19:57.45933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:24.948428
License: Public Domain

T. E. Brennan, J.
(dissenting). I dissent.
The general rule of law is that an owner of premises is not liable to persons injured through the negligence of an independent contractor.
There is a well developed exception to that rule, in cases where the contract calls for the performance on an inherently dangerous activity.
In such cases, it is said that a nondelegable duty reposes with the owner; that he may not insulate himself from the performance of that duty by the employment of a contractor.
The application of this well settled exception is clear in cases where the injured person is a stranger to the inherently dangerous activity. In Inglis v Millersburg Driving Association, 169 Mich 311 (1912), the inherently dangerous activity was burning, and the plaintiff was a neighboring landowner; in Grinnell v Carbide & Carbon Chemicals Corp, 282 Mich 509 (1937), the danger was explosion, the plaintiff a purchaser of a stove; in Watkins v Gabriel Steel Co, 260 Mich 692 (1932), the dangerous activity was elevated steel construction, the plaintiff a mason contractor; in Olah v Katz, 234 Mich 112 (1926), the danger was an open pit, the plaintiff a neighboring child; in Detroit v Corey, 9 Mich 165 (1861), the danger was an open ditch, the plaintiff a passer-by; in Darmstaetter v Moynahan, 27 Mich 188 (1873), the danger was a wall of ice in the roadway, the plaintiff a sleigh rider; in McWilliams v Detroit Central Mills Co, 31 Mich 274 (1875), the danger was a railroad switching operation, the plaintiff a passer-by. The *453leading case from our sister state of Ohio, Covington & Cincinnati Bridge Co v Steinbrock & Patrick, 61 Ohio 215; 55 NE 618 (1899), was an instance of unsupported walls which fell upon and injured a neighbor. The English cases discussed in Covington are mostly based upon the theory of lateral support and involve injury or damage to neighbors.
Indeed, there are almost no cases which have come to notice in which the suit is brought by or on behalf of a plaintiff who was himself actively engaged in the inherently dangerous activity.
Those few precedents which are cited seem to be founded upon other grounds. Thus Lake Superior Iron Co v Erickson, 39 Mich 492 (1878), was a suit by a workman engaged in mining. The danger there was a falling rock, not shored up by the mine owners. Liability was predicated upon the condition of the premises, and the undelegated as opposed to nondelegable duty of the mine owners to guard against falling rocks.
"They testified, and the jury must have believed them, that the company reserved the power of determining when and where dangerous rock in the wall should be removed, if requiring removal by blasting, and of locating the supporting pillars or placing timbers to prop the wall. Such timbering would be expensive, and is not provided for by the contracts which are confined to rock and ore blasting and removal. Either the mine must be unguarded, or else, on this state of facts, the company must guard it.
"Under such circumstances it is very plain that the company being the owners of the dangerous property, and inviting men to work on it, their responsibility for its protection cannot be changed by the fact that the work is done by the ton instead of by the day, or by the fact that the men who contract with them have laborers of their own. By employing men to act for them in either way they hold out the assurance that they can *454work in the mine on the ordinary conditions of safety usually found in such places. They guarantee nothing more than is usual among prudent owners, and they do not insure against that which is purely accidental. But they do tacitly represent that they have not been and will not be reckless themselves.” Lake Superior Iron Co v Erickson, supra, 502-503.
Lake Superior Iron Co v Erickson arose before the advent of the workmen’s compensation laws. It was then competent for the workman to bring suit against his employer. The points of law cited by both litigants in their briefs to the Court demonstrate that the case was essentially such an action.
Utley v Taylor & Gaskin, Inc, 305 Mich 561 (1943), was a similar case to Watkins v Gabriel Steel Co, supra, with one added twist. In Watkins, the mason contractor was injured through the negligence of the structural steel subcontractor and the mason was permitted to recover from the general steel contractor on the principle of the Inglis, Olah and Wight cases.
In Utley, the injured mason was an employee of the general contractor. At that time, 1937, the workmen’s compensation law gave the employee the option of claiming compensation benefits or maintaining a tort action against a responsible third party. Moore, the mason, chose workmen’s compensation, and the plaintiff Utley was the general contractor who as Moore’s subrogee brought suit against the negligent structural steel subcontractor. In Utley, it was the defendant who relied on Olah, Wight and Watkins.
"In other words, defendant claims that, steel construction work being inherently or intrinsically dangerous, the exception to the independent contractor rule is applicable; that under such rule plaintiff is liable for the negligence of defendant as an independent contrac*455tor; and that such negligence, imputed to plaintiff, bars his recovery.” Utley v Taylor & Gaskin, Inc, supra, 571.
There, it was held that plaintiff Utley as statutory subrogee, stood in the shoes of the injured workman. Plaintiffs own negligence was not imputed to the workman, and was held not to bar recovery.
An excellent statement of the rationale of the "inherently dangerous activity” doctrine is found in Covington, cited above:
"It is urged as unreasonable that one who has work to perform, that he himself cannot perform, from want of knowledge or skill, should be held liable for the negligence of one whom he employed to do it, since, if he did reserve control, it would avail nothing from his own want of knowledge and skill. There is a seeming force in this, but only so. It is' not agreeable to the principles of distributive justice. For it is equally a hardship that one should suffer loss by the negligent performance of work which another procured to be done for his own benefit, and which he in no way promoted and over which he had no control. Hence, where work is to be done that may endanger others, there is no real hardship in holding the party, for whom it is done, responsible for neglect in doing it. Though he may not be able to do it himself, or intelligently supervise it, he will nevertheless, be the more careful in selecting an agent to act for him. This is a duty which arises in all cases where an agent is employed; and no harm can come from stimulating its exercise in the employment of an independent contractor, where the rights of others are concerned.” p 229.
The foregoing quotation, and the statement from Cooley on Torts, quoted in my Brother’s opinion, emphasize that the rule of liability is designed to protect innocent third parties injured by the execution of an inherently dangerous undertaking. The rule is not designed, nor was it ever intended *456to benefit the contractor who undertakes the dangerous work, or his employees.
Thus, if I employ a contractor to remove a tree stump from my yard by use of explosives, I am liable to my neighbor whose garage is damaged by the concussion. This is because it is I who have set the project in motion; it is I who have created the unusual peril; it is for my benefit that the explosives were used. As between myself and my neighbor, I ought not to be permitted to plead that it was the contractor’s negligence and not my own which damaged his property.
But if the contractor should blow up his own truck, I should not be liable. He is the expert in explosives and not me. I had neither the legal right nor the capability to supervise his work. The same would be true if the contractor’s workman had injured himself, or been injured by the. carelessness of a fellow workman or the negligence of his employer. Neither the contractor nor his employees are "others”, as contemplated in Cooley’s statement of the rule. Indeed, they are privy to the contract which creates the peril.
The mischief of today’s decision is not its result, but its logic. One assumes that a company like General Motors has no want of access to expertise. It may well have safety engineers on its payroll far more knowledgeable about structural steel than the decedent’s employer. But to predicate liability here on the Inglis, Olah, Wight and Watkins line of cases is to impose upon many, many other, less sophisticated defendants the same burden to attend to the safety of the employees of independent contractors.
T. G. Kavanagh, J., concurred with T. E. Brennan, J.