Court Opinion

ID: 9686386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:45:30.783126+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:52:38.875902
License: Public Domain

BARHAM, Justice
(concurring).
I agree with Mr. Justice Tate in his concurring opinion and assign these additional reasons.
The writer of the majority opinion, apparently in a primary concern with and an-xiety to- write upon the holding in Reymond v. State, Department of Highways, 255 La. 425, 231 So.2d 375, in its application of Civil Code Article 667, has ignored the only issue presently before the court and resorted to dicta. The majority opinion, when reduced to its essentials without dicta, consists of a portion of one sentence, to-wit: “ * * * this hold harmless clause compels Jenkins and its insurer to indemnify the parish to .the extent of the parish’s liability.” The majority has used a simple suit for contract interpretation to expound upon an issue foreign to the case. The basis for the parish’s liability to the plaintiff is not germane to a determination of the relator’s rights to indemnification under this succinct and explicit save and hold harmless clause. Liability between the plaintiff and the defendants was determined below, has not been made a matter of appeal, and is not an issue before this court.
Adopting the ancient sic utere doctrine, “so use your own as not to injure another’s property”, the majority in dicta through its many quotations from doctrinal writings actually states a much broader principle than sic utere — that is, damage resulting from 'certain activities on any property creates liability not only to adjacent property and property owners but also to those who have no proprietary rights. Mr. Justice Sanders’ dissent in Reymond and the majority opinion here, which quotes with approval from that dissent, adopt the ra*21tionales of case after case which are far broader than the sic rttere doctrine. Lip service is given to the doctrine, but in actual application the limitations implicit in it are repudiated. The majority here, after adopting Article 667 as embodying the sic utere doctrine and stating its obvious limitation to “the rights of proprietors in the use of their property”, states that “This liability which the law imposes attaches also to the agent or contractor, who, as in this case, becomes solidarily liable with the proprietor if his activity causes damage to a neighbor”. (Emphasis mine.) The majority cites no law for this latter holding, and certainly it cannot find such authority in Civil Code Article 667 or in the sic utere principle.
Reymond was simply the beginning of an attempt to establish a rational basis upon which we could, without distortion of the codal provisions, determine the liability in cases involving inherently dangerous constructions and ultra-hazardous activities. The jurisprudence of this state long before Reymond had repudiated in fact the strict application of the sic útero principle : The neighborhood had been broadened, the exclusively proprietary interest had been discarded, and our courts had repeatedly reached results which removed the restrictions inherent in that doctrine.
Langlois v. Allied Chemical Corporation, No. 50852 on our docket, this day decided, 256 La. 877, 239 So.2d 539, applies the Reymond principle. It is an enunciation of the only principle which will uniformly reach the result apparently desired by the majority in this case. It place the delictual responsibility for the ultra-hazardous activities and enterprises of man under Civil Code Article 2315 and eliminates the former restrictions necessarily imposed when Civil Code Article 667 was literally applied. It removes the strictures which forced this court in the past co disregard what it had held to be positive codal law in order to reach what it found to be the Code’s positive intent. It permits full use of the civilian jurisprudential technique and our Code.
I concur only in the holding that the save and hold harmless clause indemnifying against all claims “that may arise out of or by reason of the performance of the work” required the insurer of the contractor to indemnify the parish from liability for damages arising out of the performance of the work.