Court Opinion

ID: 9533963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:35:57.056665+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:29:14.864502
License: Public Domain

FARRELL, Associate Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I have combed the record in this case and am unable to conclude that the District preserved either argument on appeal for reversing the denial of its motions for directed verdict and judgment notwithstanding the verdict. Unless we are to hold, unjustifiably in my view, that the bare assertion by the District’s trial attorney that “we delegated our duty” to Sehlosser preserved the issues, then the District has waived the arguments that (a), as a matter of law, ordinary building construction work does not involve “inherently dangerous” activity, and (b), even if it may, the inherently dangerous activity doctrine does not apply to employees of independent contractors. I would therefore sustain the verdict against the District of Columbia. On the other hand, in my view the District is correct in its argument that it is entitled to indemnification by Sehlosser, and Sehlosser in turn — as the majority holds — is entitled to indemnification by Maryland Drywall.
I.
Robertson filed suit against, among others, the District of Columbia, W.M. Sehlosser Company, and Maryland Drywall Company, alleging that the construction activity undertaken by each defendant amounted to abnormally dangerous activity in the course of which negligence occurred causing him injury. In his pretrial statement, Robertson asserted that the District had a non-delegable duty to provide him with a safe workplace based on the inherently dangerous activity being conducted. The District filed an answer but did not seek summary judgment against Robertson on either ground raised in its appeal. Sehlosser, on the other hand, moved for summary judgment on the District’s claim for indemnification under the parties’ contract, to which the District responded that the contract provisions established that it had “delegated] all responsibility for site safety, including supervision of individual laborers and prohibitions against work under hazardous conditions,” to Schlos-ser. The judge granted summary judgment to Sehlosser on this issue. As to Robertson, *655the District did not question the judge’s pretrial determination that whether the construction work was inherently dangerous was an issue for the jury to decide. At the close of Robertson’s case, the District moved for a directed verdict solely on the ground of contributory negligence. At the close of all the evidence, the District renewed the motion but argued only that “we believe that the plaintiff has failed to establish a duty that is owed. We believe our contract delegat[e]s the duty, the responsibility for the safety for the site, such that we do not owe a duty to the plaintiff.” The District made no objection to the judge’s instruction to the jury explaining a landowner’s liability for damages to persons injured during performance of inherently dangerous work by an independent contractor.
Following the verdict, the District moved for JNOV or a new trial. The former (alone at issue here) was based entirely on the claims that Robertson had been contribu-torily negligent as a matter of law and— curiously — that the judge’s earlier ruling on indemnification had been erroneous. I quote the argument in full:
Before this case was sent to the jury, the Court denied the defendant’s motion for a directed verdict based upon the plaintiff’s failure to establish that the defendant had violated a duty of care that was owed to him. An element necessary to establish a cause of action in negligence is “a duty or obligation, recognized by the law, requiring an action to conform to a certain standard of conduct, for the protection of others against an unreasonable risk.” W. PROS-SER, Handbook on the Law of ToRTS, Sec. 30 (4th ed. 1971). A plaintiff seeking recovery in tort must demonstrate that the defendant owed a duty which inurred to his particular benefit. Id. at Sec. 53 p. 324.
Earlier in this proceeding, well before this trial commenced, the Court ruled that W.M. Schlosser, Inc. was not required to fulfill its contractual obligation to indemnify, defend[1] and hold harmless its eon-tractee, the District, even though it had voluntarily undertaken to do so when the contract was let. The Court’s ruling was premised upon a determination that the District could not contract away its own negligence. However, for reasons more fully articulated in the District’s opposition to Co-defendant Schlosser’s motion for partial summary judgement, the Court’s reliance upon the case of District of Columbia v. Royal, 465 A.2d 367 (D.C.App.1983), for the proposition that the District is precluded from delegating responsibility for site safety to Schlosser is misplaced.
As subsequent developments have shown, the District was greatly prejudiced by this ruling. For it not only permitted the plaintiff to improperly focus the jury’s attention upon evidentiary matters whose significance and perspective became contorted such as the suggestion that the District was obligated to supply the plaintiff with safety equipment. It also absolved the plaintiff from the necessity of explaining to the jury the nature of the District’s obligation, if any, to provide a safe workplace. It became sufficient for the plaintiff to adduce evidence that the District, having applied for a building permit was thereby undertaking to ensure the safety of the entire project. Thus, a situation was created that permitted the complete avoidance of the entire concept of a duty of care owed and a violation of that duty. Instead, the jury was free to hold the District to a standard of strict liability, a result which offends the holding of the Court of Appeals in the Hyman[2] case.
By contrast, the Court of Appeals in General Elevator Company, Inc. v. District of Columbia, 481 A.2d 116 (D.C.App.1984) ruled that the District could not be held liable to a plaintiff injured in one of its elevators because it had contractually delegated responsibility for elevator maintenance to General Elevator Company and it had not violated any other duty independently owed to the plaintiff. 481 A.2d at 119. In like manner, the District delegated responsibility for safety at the Arthur *656Capper site to the Schlosser Company. Indeed, the court in General Elevator, supra, distinguished the decision of the Court of Appeals in Royal, supra, on the basis that the latter case involved a violation of a similar independently owed duty to the minor plaintiff. No such duty independently owed to the plaintiff Andre Robertson by the District of Columbia has been identified or placed in issue in this proceeding. Therefore, the Court should grant the District’s motion for judgement notwithstanding the verdict reached by the jury in this trial.
As is apparent, nowhere in this argument did the District assert that, as a matter of law, ordinary construction site work is not inherently dangerous such that the issue of inherently dangerous activity never should have been given to the jury, or that this exception to the delegation rule could not be invoked by an employee of a contractor. Not surprisingly, therefore, the trial judge reasoned as follows in denying the District’s motion:
[T]he District requests judgment notwithstanding the verdict on the basis that no independent duty of care was owed to Plaintiff by the District. The District then proceeds to argue that the Court’s February 12, 1991, ruling which granted partial summary judgment to Schlosser on the issue of indemnification was incorrect. It appears that the District is attempting to equate the issue of whether a duty was owed to Plaintiff by the District with the issue of whether Schlosser should indemnify it for its liability. These issues cannot be equated. The first issue concerns the District’s potential liability, while the second issue concerns who should bear ultimate responsibility for the resulting damages for the breach of an existent duty.
The Court of Appeals in Levy v. Currier, 587 A.2d 205, 209 (D.C.App.1991) adopted the principle of Lindler v. District of Columbia, 164 U.SApp.D.C. 35, 38[3] (D.C.Cir.1974) that where the District contracts for the performance of inherently dangerous work, the District has the duty to guard against injuries to third parties which may result from the performance of such work. Furthermore, these cases hold that such a duty is not delegable.
Nowhere in its pleading does the District dispute the correctness of the Court’s interpretation of the law. In fact, it conceded on the record, prior to trial and through submission of its own proposed special interrogatories to the jury, that this was indeed the law to be applied to this case. The District is merely utilizing its motion to reargue its position that the Schlosser-District contract was sufficiently broad to indemnify the District against its own negligence; an issue on which the Court has conclusively ruled, i.e., the District was not entitled to indemnification.
Plaintiff presented ample evidence to allow the jury to conclude that the work engaged in by Plaintiff was inherently dangerous. In fact, the jury’s verdict specifically made that finding. [Footnotes omitted.]
It is impossible to find in the District’s submissions below the arguments it now raises against the jury verdict. As the trial judge recognized, the District’s attorney confused the separate issues of indemnification and liability. At no place did he argue for a broad exemption of ordinary construction work from the reach of the inherently dangerous activity exception, nor for an equally broad exemption for employees of an independent contractor. Rule 50 of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure, at the time of trial, required a motion for directed verdict to “state the specific grounds therefor.” The revised rule now effective does not change the standard materially, requiring the motion to “specify the judgment sought and the law and the facts on which the moving party is entitled to judgment” (emphasis added). A bare assertion that the District had delegated its obligation for worksite safety to Schlosser, without challenging the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the classic exception to the delegation rule at issue here, does not meet this test. I would therefore apply the principle that,
*657[i]n our jurisprudential system, trial and appellate processes are synchronized in contemplation that review will normally be confined to matters appropriately submitted for determination in the court of first resort. Questions not properly raised and preserved during the proceedings under examination, and points not asserted with sufficient ‘precision to indicate distinctly the party’s thesis, will normally be spumed on appeal.
Miller v. Avirom, 127 U.S.App.D.C. 367, 469-70, 384 F.2d 319, 321-22 (1967) (emphasis added).
I likewise am unwilling to decide for the first time on appeal, as the District urges us to do, the difficult question of employee recovery under the inherently dangerous activity exception. The District urges us to reject the holding of Lindler v. District of Columbia, 164 U.S.App.D.C. 36, 39, 502 F.2d 496, 498 (1974), as inconsistent with the majority view,4 but I am not convinced without further analysis that we can bar contractor employees from recovery in this context consistently with Meiggs v. Associated Builders, Inc., 546 A.2d 631 (D.C.1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1116, 109 S.Ct. 3178, 104 L.Ed.2d 1040 (1989) (ordinarily, employees of subcontractor may sue general contractor — and, by implication, landowner — in tort despite receiving worker’s compensation). So complex an issue as the interplay between worker’s compensation and the inherently dangerous activity exception should not engage our energies when it was raised neither on summary judgment nor in any other specific manner at trial.
The majority may well be correct that construction work of the sort Robertson performed should generally not be considered inherently dangerous for purposes of this exception to the delegation rule. But I cannot say the District’s failure to argue this point specifically in its directed verdict motions had no effect on the adequacy of the plaintiffs proof, see Howard Univ. v. Best, 647 A.2d 144, 148 (D.C.1988) (purpose of the motion is to “put [opposing party] on notice of the alleged deficiency in her proof’), or on the framing of the legal issues submitted to the jury. In particular, had the District not conceded that the inherently dangerous activity issue was for the jury to decide, Robertson might have pressed more vigorously for submission to the jury of his alternative theory (Complaint, ¶¶ 8-13) that the District breached a non-delegable duty stemming from its right to control the contractor’s work by mandatory inspections by the on-site construction inspector, a District employee. See Restatement (Second) of ToRts § 414 comment c (1966); City of Miami v. Perez, 609 So.2d 343, 346 (Fla.Ct.App.1987); Micheletto v. State, 244 Mont. 483, 798 P.2d 989, 997-98 (1990) (McDonough J., dissenting) (“If there is an exercise of retained control, then it does not matter who expressly assumed safety duties under the contract, as the general contractor has a separate and distinct duty of reasonable care”).
I would hold that the District’s motions for directed verdict and JNOV were properly denied.
II.
At the same time, the District is correct in regard to an issue it squarely raised at trial, i.e., that it is entitled to indemnification from Schlosser under the terms of its contract with the general contractor. (My colleagues in the majority have no occasion to reach this issue). The case was submitted to the jury via interrogatories that premised the District’s liability on a finding that the work Robertson performed was inherently dangerous. If, the verdict form stated, “you find that Mr. Robertson was not engaged in inherently dangerous work, your [the jury’s] work is completed.” If the jury found affirmatively on that question, they were next to decide whether “the failure to guard the wall opening through which Mr. Robertson fell was due to negligence” as the judge had defined it.5 Accordingly, the District’s negli*658gence vel non was predicated on vicarious liability: the negligence of Sehlosser (and its subcontractor) in failing to guard the wall opening, if found by the jury, was imputable to the District as landowner if — but only if— Robertson had been engaged in inherently dangerous work, which the jury found to be the case. The indemnification article of the District’s contract with Sehlosser provided:
The Contractor shall indemnify and save harmless the District and all of its officers, agents and servants against any and all claims or liability arising from or based on, or a consequence or result of, any act, omission or default of the Contractor, his employees, or his subcontractors, in the performance of, or in connection with, any work required, contemplated or performed under the Contract.
Because the District’s liability in this case stemmed from the “act, omission or default of the Contractor, his employees, or his subcontractors,” the District was entitled to indemnification under the contract. See East Penn Mfg. Co. v. Pineda, 578 A.2d 1113, 1126 (D.C.1990).
In General Elevator Co. v. District of Columbia, 481 A.2d 116 (D.C.1984), the District was found liable for breach of a duty to maintain an elevator. That duty had been delegated to General Elevator in a contract for maintenance and repair that had an indemnity clause similar to the one in this case.6 We held that the District was entitled to indemnity, stating:
[SJinee the District owed Mrs. Cephas [the plaintiff] no duty other than the one which it had delegated to General Elevator, namely, to maintain the elevators in good working order, the judgment which it had to pay Mrs. Cephas was clearly within the scope of the indemnity clause.
Id. at 120. This case is like General Elevator and quite unlike District of Columbia v. Royal, 465 A.2d 367 (D.C.1983), on which the trial judge incorrectly relied. We summarized Royal in General Elevator as follows:
In {Royal ], we held that an indemnification clause similar to the one in this case was not broad enough to indemnify the District against liability for its own negligence. The six-year-old plaintiff in Royal was injured when a pole fell on her at a construction site near her school. She sued both the construction company and the District, alleging inter alia that the District had negligently failed to supervise school children in the construction area. The District filed a cross-claim against the construction company based on an indemnity clause in the construction contract. The trial court ruled against the District on the cross-claim, and we affirmed, holding that the contractual language could not be stretched to encompass the District’s breach of its own independent duty, as the party to whose care the plaintiff had been entrusted during school hours, to protect her from injury — ie., that it had breached a duty to the plaintiff which had not been delegated to the construction company by the contract containing the indemnity clause.
481 A.2d at 119-20. Just as General Elevator “differ[ed]” from Royal in that the District “owed Mrs. Cephas no duty other than the one which it had delegated,” id., so does this case differ: the District had no duty to Robertson, under the theory of liability submitted in this case, other than the one it delegated to Sehlosser. Indeed, the very purpose of the indemnity clause was to shift any liability for negligence on the construction site to the party contracted with to perform the work. As the District points out, such provisions allow the government to fix the cost of a construction project at its inception. They provide notice to the contractor of the risks of loss for which it needs insurance, and allow it to factor in the cost for insurance when submitting a bid. The *659net effect of such provisions is to require the contractor to obtain insurance and permit the District to charge to that insurance any liability it may incur as a result of any act or omission of the contractor or his employees or subcontractors.
I would hold that Schlosser must indemnify the District for the damages attributable to the District by virtue of the jury’s finding of inherently dangerous activity.
III.
It remains for me to say that I agree with the majority that Maryland Drywall is contractually obliged to indemnify Schlosser for damages resulting from the negligence of Schlosser. On that point Moses-Ecco Co. v. Roscoe-Ajax Corp., 115 U.S.App.D.C. 366, 369, 320 F.2d 685, 688 (1963), and especially Princemont Constr. Corp. v. Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co., 131 A.2d 877 (D.C.1957), are controlling.7 See also Rivers & Bryan, Inc. v. HBE Corp., 628 A.2d 631, 630-37 (D.C.1993).

. Emphasis in original.

. Martin v. George Hyman Constr. Co., 395 A.2d 63 (D.C.1978).

. 502 F.2d 495, 498.

. Lindler held that the District’s duty to guard against injuries to third persons resulting from inherently dangerous work applied equally to third persons generally and to employees of the District's contractor.

. If the answer to this question was "yes,” they were to decide further whether Robertson had assumed the risk or been contributorily negligent, and (if not) whether "the failure to guard *658the wall opening was the proximate cause of Air. Robertson’s injuries.”

. The clause provided that General Elevator would indemnify the District for "any and all claims ... on account of any injuries to persons ... that occur as a result of any act or omission of [General Elevator] ... in the prosecution of the work under this Contract,” though General Elevator would not be hable “for personal injury ... if it is proved that it was beyond [its] control and not due to [its] negligence.” General Elevator, 481 A.2d at 117.

. The same contractual provision required Maryland Drywall to indemnify the District of Columbia ("the Owner”) as well.