Court Opinion

ID: 9531412
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:10:40.475674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:26.402138
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Schaefer, dissenting: It is difficult for me to understand just what is meant by the following statement in the majority opinion: “No evidence was introduced to show that the monorail exposed him more to the risk of injury from lightning than were persons in other employments in the locality, or that the risk of being injured by lightning was enhanced by reason of his place of employment.” Clearly, persons employed in other places were not required to work on a loading dock, underneath a roof and a monorail which served as an efficient conductor of lightning. What is apparently meant, therefore, is that recovery is denied because of the absence of expert testimony to the effect that lightning will travel along a monorail of the type here involved. Apart from the fact that the evidence showed that the monorail actually served as a conductor for the lightning in this case, I think that the commission properly took judicial notice of its suitability as a conductor even in the absence of expert testimony. See, e.g., DeLuca v. Board of Park Comrs., (Conn. 1919) 107 Atl. 611. The opinion of the court describes the occurrence of August 20, 1962, but it does not mention the fact that on September 13, 1962, lightning again struck an “intercom box” close to where the claimant was standing on the third floor of the building, six feet from the elevator shaft, and just above the location where the first incident occurred. If proof beyond the first incident was required to show that this monorail and the building through which it ran was a place of special or unusual danger during an electrical storm, it was supplied by the second. In my opinion, Illinois Country Club v. Industrial Com., 387 Ill. 484, upon which the majority relies, should be overruled. It is contrary to the principles expressed and applied in Chmelik v. Vana, 31 Ill.2d 272, and C. A. Dunham Co. v. Industrial Com., 16 Ill.2d 102. To say that the general public is exposed to the same danger from lightning as a golf caddy who is out on the course carrying two bags of clubs seems quite unrealistic. His alternatives were to remain in the open, to go under a tree, or to leave the clubs and players for whom he was caddying and look for another job. A similar unrealistic approach was rejected in American Freight Forwarding Corp. v. Industrial Com., 31 Ill.2d 293, which overruled the earlier Consumers Co. v. Industrial Com., 324 Ill. 152. Both cases involved injuries from frostbite. The earlier case denied recovery. In the more recent case the court said: “The average man, free of obligations of any particular employment, does not stay outdoors for gji hours when the average temperature is 6 degrees below zero. The ordinary person is not engaged in outside work in cold weather and experience teaches us to stay inside when necessary to avoid the risk of frostbite. Petitioner, unfortunately, did not have the choice of staying inside or not.” 31 Ill.2d at 296-7. Mr. Justice Kluczynsici concurs in this dissent.