Court Opinion

ID: 9625200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:31:05.587758+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:02.591797
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Justice
(dissenting).
The undisputed facts are that a number of independent contractors were engaged in the building of an industrial building. The plaintiff here is the employee of one independent contractor and the defendant partnership is another independent contractor. The defendant independent contractor had no supervisory control of the other, the employer of plaintiff. The defendants made the hole in the second floor through which plaintiff fell. The evidence shows beyond question that the hole made by defendants; was securely and safely covered and that the defendants ceased operating on said floor and none of their employees returned thereto.
There was no duty on the defendants’' part to thereafter supervise or maintain the hole made by them and covered by them in a safe, non-negligent manner. The plaintiff, in conjunction with other employees of his employer, an independent contractor, was moving a heavy sheet of steel and in doing so came in close proximity to the covered hole in question. By some action, wholly unidentified by the evidence, the covering of the opening was misplaced or made in an unsafe .condition by the removal of the cleats which had theretofore fastened it. For the plaintiff in any event to recover against defendants there would have to be grounds for a reasonable inference that the defendants, through their employees, of course, did something to make the opening and its covering unsafe.
There being no duty to supervise or maintain the covering and the evidence being positive and uncontradicted that the employees of defendants had nothing to do with the opening after they rendered it thoroughly safe and quit working on the second floor, such inference would necessarily be purely conjecture.
Then, too, the duty of one independent "contractor to the employees of another independent contractor is riot to create a • snare or trap. The defendants* here were •as to plaintiff’s employer’s employees a li-censor. In the case of Arthur v. Standard Engineering Co., 89 App.D.C. 399, 193 F.2d 903, 906, 32 A.L.R.2d 408, there was a fact situation very similar to' the case at ■ bar. The case holds that the relation of one subcontractor to the employees of another subcontractor is that of licensor and licensee, and ;states in the opinion quoting from Brauner v. Leutz, 293 Ky. 406, 169 S.W.2d 4:
“ ‘The doctrine appears to be universal that a licensor owes no duty to a licensee to provide safe places or premises for the occupancy or use of his li-' censee, save and except to abstain from *731doing any intentional, wilful (and in some jurisdictions gross recldess) act endangering the safety of the licensee.’ ”
The evidence does not show either that the defendants negligently constructed the covering in the first instance or that they were thereafter responsible for the cleats being removed from the cover or that they knew the covering was in an unsafe condition and allowed it to remain that way. This is true as to the state of proof, though the allegations of the petition may have been to the contrary. For there to be liability on the part of the independent contractor partners in this case it must be assumed, contrary to the record, that such evidence was introduced.