Court Opinion

ID: 9719335
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:49:08.969776+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:06.113988
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE STEIGMANN, dissenting: Dissenting judges commonly state that they “respectfully dissent” even when one suspects that their claim reflects tradition more than reality. In this case, I truly do respectfully dissent because the majority opinion, in many ways, is compelled by previous decisions of the supreme court and the appellate court, which in turn are constructions of the Act — an historical anomaly that has long since outlived its reason for existence. That the defendant in this case should be ordered to pay this plaintiff a half million dollars in many ways confirms what much of the public already suspects: that the law truly is an ass. Further, until the General Assembly finally abolishes the Act or the supreme court reinterprets it to avoid some of its more ridiculous applications (particularly this very case), the verdict here should stand as a semaphore, warning prospective businesses thinking of locating in this State that they will be treated like so many “marks” in a legal system that works like a confidence game. The majority opinion states that defendant correctly argues that to be liable under the Act, an owner of the property must have been in charge of the operation during which the injury occurred. (243 Ill. App. 3d at 412.) However, the majority then notes that the supreme court decision stating this ruling, Warren (55 Ill. 2d at Ill, 302 N.E.2d at 56), also observed that the defendant company in Warren did not appear to have the authority to stop plaintiff’s work if it was being performed in a dangerous manner. (243 Ill. App. 3d at 412.) Although the majority correctly reads Warren, surely the supreme court could not have meant the full implications of that statement. After all, if a homeowner contracts with a roofing company to repair his roof and, upon returning home from work, observes a roofer performing circus stunts on the homeowner’s roof, surely he has the authority to order the work stopped because it is being performed in a dangerous manner. But if the roofer fell 15 minutes before the homeowner came home and injured himself as a result of doing his circus stunts, should the homeowner still be liable because, had he returned home in time, he “could have stopped the work from being performed in a dangerous manner”? To so hold does not make any sense. This example reveals just one of the areas that the supreme court must address as long as Illinois citizens continue to be burdened by the Act. Although the majority opinion also correctly states that the Act in theory does not impose absolute liability on prospective defendants (243 Ill. App. 3d at 412), reality indicates to the contrary, as shown by cases like the present one. This case in particular and the Act in general represent the worst aspects of the “indemnification society” that we have become. Here, defendant essentially did nothing at all wrong, yet is being punished for having expressed its concern for the safety of its workers although it could not guarantee that its workers would not be injured (or, as here, injure themselves because of their own gross negligence). Clearly defendant would have been much better off had it never said anything on the subject of worker safety or had it tried to shift all safety concerns to others. This half million dollar judgment provides a perverse disincentive for contractors to set forth in writing their goal of providing a safe workplace and the steps they plan to utilize to achieve that goal. Further, one can hardly dispute, based on this case, that the more safety concerns a contractor expresses, the higher a standard plaintiff’s counsel will argue the contractor has set for itself, and the bigger (and more expensive) the fall that awaits the contractor. The majority opinion also states the following: “A willful violation of the Act occurs only when evidence shows defendant knows or, in the exercise of reasonable care, should know the dangerous condition exists.” (Emphasis added.) (243 Ill. App. 3d at 415.) The majority cites Smith (176 Ill. App. 3d at 488, 531 N.E.2d at 55) as support for this holding. In turn, Smith cites Kohutko (148 Ill. App. 3d at 187, 498 N.E.2d at 526 (“[f]or a wilful violation, it is only necessary that the defendant know, or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known, of the existence of a dangerous condition”)), which cites Blake v. Tri-State Crane Service, Inc. (1983), 114 Ill. App. 3d 1059, 1067, 449 N.E.2d 946, 953 (“[a] violation of the Act is wilful when a person having charge of the work knew or, in the exercise of ordinary care, should have known of a dangerous condition”), which cites Lavery v. Ridgeway House, Inc. (1969), 117 Ill. App. 2d 176, 186, 254 N.E.2d 117, 122 (“[tjhere can be no liability under the Act without evidence that the Act was violated and that such violation was ‘wilful’ ”), which — finally—cites a supreme court decision, Gundich v. Emerson-Comstock Co. (1960), 21 Ill. 2d 117, 129, 171 N.E.2d 60, 67, where the supreme court wrote the following: “The term ‘wilfully’ in the Scaffold Act has been construed by this court to be synonymous with ‘knowingly,’ and it is not necessary that there be a reckless or wanton disregard of the provisions of the [A]ct in order to constitute an actionable violation thereof.” How did we get from the supreme court’s construction of the term “willfully” as being synonymous with “knowingly” — a not particularly remarkable interpretation — to the present state of the law, as stated in Smith (176 Ill. App. 3d at 488, 531 N.E.2d at 55), that a willful violation of the Act occurs not only when the evidence shows the defendant acted willfully or knowingly but, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have known that the dangerous condition existed? I submit the Act is bad enough without this judicial gloss that the appellate court has given it that, in effect, renders a contractor absolutely liable for injuries suffered by its structural workers. As the present case all too starkly reveals, a claim that a contractor “in the exercise of reasonable care, should have known that the dangerous condition exists” is almost impossible to defend, especially if the contractor is foolish enough to ever express any concerns about — or to take any steps to address — the safety of its workers. As a simple matter of statutory construction, even if a “willful” violation of the Act is synonymous with a “knowing” violation of the Act, how can this court possibly countenance a finding of a willful violation of the Act — which is, after all, the statutory term — when the evidence here shows that the defendant in fact did not know of the dangerous condition but perhaps should have? To hold that a defendant under these circumstances “willfully” violated the Act is the judicial equivalent of holding up is down, green is blue, or right is left. The “should have known” standard applies to simple negligence; it has no place in an analysis of a standard that provides liability only for a “willful” violation. In conclusion, I add again that I disagree not so much with the particular decision in this case as with the Act itself and the judicial gloss that has been given to it. The time has come to chip away at the patina of this ill-thought-out precedent, and this case would be a good place to start.