Court Opinion

ID: 9793342
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:46:14.956135+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:04:34.322269
License: Public Domain

Schroeder, C.J.,
dissenting: The substance of the court’s decision is to circumvent the limited recovery permitted by the Workmen’s Compensation Act and make new law. Here the contractor responsible for compliance with safety standards in fulfilling his contract owed a duty to his employees to shore trenches made on the job site. The resultant liability of the contractor who was covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Act for the death of the contractor’s workman is borne by the contractor’s workmen’s compensation insurance carrier.
To reverse in this case the court relies on Syllabus ¶ 4 in Hanna v. Huer, Johns, Neel, Rivers & Webb, 233 Kan. 206, 662 P.2d 243 (1983).
This is pure dictum in Hanna and is taken from the portion of the opinion which reads:
“The general rule as to an architect’s responsibility for negligence has been stated as follows:
“ ‘An architect may be held liable for negligence in failing to exercise the ordinary skill of his profession, which results in the erection of an unsafe structure whereby any one lawfully on the premises is injured. An architect’s liability for negligence resulting in personal injury or death may be based upon his supervisory activities or upon defects in the plans. The liability of the architect, moreover, is not limited to the owner who employed him; the modern *1086view is that privity of contract is not a prerequisite to liability. As in other negligence cases, however, there can be no recovery against the architect unless it can be established that his negligence was the proximate case of the personal injury or wrongful death sued for.’ 5 Am. Jur. 2d, Architects § 25, pp. 688-89.
“As a professional, an architect cannot stand idly by with actual knowledge of unsafe safety practices on the jobsite and take no steps to advise or warn the owner or contractor. Even in such a situation, however, the plaintiffs still bear the burden of showing the duty owed to them, a breach of that duty and that the breach was the proximate cause of the injuries suffered.” 233 Kan. at 221-22.
The quote from American Jurisprudence relates to the erection of an unsafe structure whereby one lawfully on the premises is injured. It pertains to the architect’s obligation in his supervisory capacity to assure structural integrity, not the manner in which the contractor supervises his day-to-day operations. No authority from Kansas or any jurisdiction is cited for the proposition stated which follows the quote.
By the court’s opinion the architect is absolved of any contractual responsibility for safety on the jobsite, but under the court’s negligence theory the architect’s supervisory capacity to see that the plans and specifications are properly fulfilled is enlarged to include responsibility for the OSHA standards written into the contract with the contractor. With this position I cannot agree.
In my opinion the trial court was correct in making findings based upon the record and in its rulings.
In its Memorandum Decision dated September 20, 1982, on the engineers’ motion for summary judgment, the trial court made the following finding of fact, which is not disputed by the parties:
“8. In the Standard Technical Specification in Section 2, Excavation, Trenching, & Backfilling, it was stated that ‘The Contractor shall assume full responsibility for the satisfactory performance of the work and the safety of the work and/or working personnel.’ . . . Said specifications further provided as follows:
“The Contractor shall assume all risk and liability for accidents and damages that may occur to persons or property during the prosecution of the work, by reason of negligence or carelessness by himself, his agents or employees, and shall assume also all direct or indirect damage that may be suffered or claimed on account of any such construction or improvement, during the time thereof and until the work is accepted.”
The district court rejected the contention that “plans and specifications” included the duty to ensure proper OSHA safety procedures for trenching, holding:
*1087“The contractual duty of the Engineers in the instant case was merely to provide inspectors when work was in progress to review construction operations for compliance with the plans and specifications. The Engineers had no authority to stop work. Furthermore, their only responsibility was to inspect and not to supervise the progress of the work. They had no contractual duty or authority to control the method and manner of the Contractor’s work. The Engineer was authorized to review construction operations for design compliance and to report any deviations to Shawnee County. No other authority was given by the contract documents.”
The contention that the architect assumed expanded duty for jobsite safety by assuming responsibility for day-to-day methods of doing the work is also premised upon the interpretation of “specifications” as including OSHA safety regulations for shoring trenches, and the fact that twice the architect required the contractor to do extra work to bring the project in compliance with the plans and specifications. In response to this argument the trial court properly held:
“Plaintiffs strenuously argue that because the Engineers required the Contractor to replace certain reinforcing steel and to redo some compaction work, the Engineers had control over the day-to-day manner and method of actually doing the work. Since the Engineers’ role at the construction site as defined by the contract documents was only to ensure design conformity and not to supervise the work, such conduct as requiring reinforcing steel to be replaced or redoing compaction work in order to comply with plans and specifications, is not the exercise of sufficient control to justify requiring Engineers to adhere to a higher standard of care than contracted for and holding such defendants liable for the accident involving plaintiffs’ decedent.” (Emphasis added.)
The court further stated:
“The fact that Engineers required the Contractor to replace certain reinforcing steel and to redo some compaction work does not constitute a voluntary assumption of a duty to plaintiffs’' decedent and is not the exercise of sufficient control in view of the contract provisions in question as to impose liability.”
Here the facts disclose that both the representative of the architect, Dallas Freeborn, and the superintendent of the contractor in charge of the work, Mr. Dinkel, were standing together on the side of the trench when the deceased workman was seen in the unshored trench. The superintendent had the same knowledge of the OSHA standards that were made a part of the contractor’s obligation as the architect. In fact, the superintendent had materials for shoring on the side of the trench that was still under construction. The backhoe was in operation on the trench, and it was only five feet deep and ten feet in length at the time of the accident. Who was the architect to notify of the *1088contractor’s failure to carry out the required safety practices in trenching operations on the jobsite? The contractor? The contractor’s superintendent was present on the jobsite and already had such knowledge. The law does not require the doing of a futile act. To whom was the duty of the architect, if any, owed? The workman in the trench? The architect had no authority to give the workman orders. Only the contractor’s superintendent on the jobsite had this authority. The court in its opinion is vague as to the duty of the architect to act, particularly what duty the architect owed to the workman in the trench.
The majority says:
“We have considered the record in this case and concluded that there is evidence to show that the Engineers, Van Doren, through their employee, Freeborn, had actual knowledge of the safety standards requiring shoring in trenching operations and, furthermore, had actual knowledge that the prescribed safety precautions were not being followed by the contractor at the time the tragic accident occurred. In our judgment, this created a duty in the Engineers to take some reasonable action to prevent injury to the contractor’s employee, Dennis Balagna. Whether or not the Engineers acted reasonably under all the circumstances was a factual issue which should have been submitted to the jury in this case.” (Emphasis added.)
The court says nothing about comparative negligence. This case tried to a jury on comparative negligence principles will be strange, indeed, because the trial court is given no guidance as to how the jury should be instructed, and the jury will be required to decide the comparative negligence of the parties where only one of the parties had the contractual obligation to comply with safety standards.
The architect’s duty to see that plans and specifications were followed merely entailed a duty to see that the sewer project when constructed met the plans and specifications for which the owner agreed to pay. The intervention of the architect on the two occasions where changes were made by the contractor falls under the architect’s duty to see that the integrity of the work meets .the plans and specifications.
The decision in this case could conceivably add 10% to the cost of construction projects in Kansas where architects are employed. Our legislature has provided that damages resulting from industrial injury or death to workers should be borne by those industries included under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. While the Act imposes an obligation on industry, it also imposes a lid on the amount that can be recovered to compensate *1089for those injuries or deaths. This case will clearly impose additional financial burdens on the construction industry.
It is respectfully submitted the judgment of the trial court should be affirmed.
McFarland, J., joins the foregoing dissenting opinion.