Court Opinion

ID: 9476146
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:48:12.306274+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:08.824374
License: Public Domain

ROSENN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Viewing the record in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and giving his evidence the benefit of all legitimate inferences which may be drawn from it, I am unable to discover any evidence to establish liability on the part of the defendant, Martin Marietta Alumina, Inc. (Martin Marietta). When the facts are such that only one conclusion can be drawn under the applicable law, it is the duty of the court to decide the question as a matter of law, and not submit it to a jury. Thomas v. E.J. Korvette, Inc., 476 F.2d 471, 474 (3d Cir.1973) (citing 5A Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 50.-07[2]). I therefore believe the district court erred in failing to grant the defendant’s motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. Hence, I respectfully dissent.
I.
Some background facts that are undisputed provide helpful perspective in fixing the duties of the parties and their relationship to each other on this appeal. Martin Marietta entered into a written contract with Arlen Building Corporation (Arlen) on March 10, 1983, for extensive construction at its plant in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Williams, the plaintiff, was employed by Riggers and Erectors (R & E), apparently a division of Arlen. Work commenced on the project in March 1983, several months before Williams’ fall. By the time construction commenced, the contractor had familiarized itself with the site, the drawings, and the scope of the work.
A relatively small portion of the work which Arlen had contracted to do included the relocation of four one-half inch oil lines for filling a tank. This apparently required Williams to work on the roof of a small building identified as a substation. The roof, frequently referred to as the lower roof, is about eight feet above the ground, and has no permanent ladder affixed to it for access; there is nothing on the roof that customarily requires maintenance. Adjacent to the substation, the defendant constructed an addition in 1979 which had a higher roof (upper roof), and to which is affixed a metal ladder allowing access for maintenance of air conditioning equipment located thereon. This ladder is located several feet away from the original substation.
Even prior to the general bidding on the construction project by contractors, Martin Marietta sent a memorandum to potential contractors stressing the importance of the safety of all employees in the work to be *1042performed on the project and the contractors’ sole responsibility for assuring a safe working place for their employees on the site. Martin Marietta reserved the right to spot check to bring any violation to the contractor’s attention for appropriate corrective action.1 When the parties later executed the formal document, the contract required that the contractor would provide the necessary supervision and equipment for the construction, including tools and scaffolding. The contractor also agreed to supply “such safety devices as are normally standard ... and to exercise usual and ordinary care in the performance of erection work on Martin Marietta’s premises.” The contractor further represented in the agreement that it had “full opportunity to inspect and investigate the site of the work and that it accepts full responsibility for all phases of the work and any and all conditions which may affect the progress of the work, including ... the site of the work ... and any patent or latent conditions which may affect the performance of the work____” R & E had the responsibility to provide and maintain handrails and/or guardrails on all open side floors, decks, and walkways with a drop of five or more feet, and had the duty to furnish, erect and install all structural steel items including stairs, ladders, walkways, platforms, and handrails. It was also the contractor’s responsibility to perform the work in compliance with federal laws and regulations, including safety laws, and to submit its own safety plan to Martin Marietta. Finally, the contractor had the responsibility to take all precautions to protect against all injuries, including accident prevention, and to continually inspect the work and supervise its employees to determine and enforce compliance with the contract provisions.
On the day of Williams’ fall, he had been working, according to his testimony, on some of the pipelines in the relocation of oil tanks from one section of the plant to another. His supervisor, Diaz, to whom he familiarly referred as “Tito,” instructed him to stop his work and to go on to the next section. He therefore had to go back on the roof of the substation to “tie the pipes off,” or secure them. He testified that he mounted the metal ladder partway, and then stepped across some conduit pipes carrying electrical wires to walk to the substation roof. The conduit pipes, six in number, ran parallel to the substation roof, and, according to photographs, appear to have been at least one foot below the roof. They were several inches in diameter, plastic coated, and, again according to photographs, appear to have varied from about one to three inches apart. When Williams stepped across “from the ladder to the pipe — conduit pipe, ... [he testified] I lost my balance and fell” the approximately seven to eight feet to the pavement.
II.
The plaintiff tried his case on the theory that despite the carefully drawn contractual provisions imposing sole responsibility for safety of its employees at the project on the contractor, all of the contractual provisions were nullified because eleven days before the accident Gonzales, Martin Marietta’s construction superintendent, showed Williams an unsafe access route to the substation roof. Williams theorized that as a result of Gonzales’ actions Martin Marietta assumed a continuing duty to Williams which would later subject Martin Marietta to liability.
Williams testified that Diaz first took him out to the substation along with Gonzales on May 5, where the two explained to him what had to be done. Williams then inquired, “How am I going to get up there? *1043Gonzales said, ‘Follow me,’ and Tito, Mr. Gonzales, and myself went to where to get up to the work area.” Williams then testified that Gonzales proceeded up the metal ladder, and across the conduits to the lower roof, followed first by Tito and then himself. This was the same route he used when he fell eleven days later.
■ Although Gonzales denied having any conversation with Williams with respect to access to the substation,2 we assume for the purposes of the motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and this appeal that such a conversation occurred. Williams’ alleged inquiry on how to get up on a flat roof merely eight feet above the ground, coming from a skilled pipefitter in the construction business and employed by an independent contractor, cannot reasonably be construed as a selection by Martin Marietta of the mandatory means of access to the work site. At most, it was a gratuitous demonstration of how one could reach the roof. The district court, however, flatly instructed the jury:
[O]ne who hires an independent contractor and undertakes to select the means of access by which the employees of said independent contractor are to reach the designated work site must, under the law, exercise reasonable care in selecting said means of access.
Plaintiff Vance Williams has presented evidence tending to prove that the defendant Martin Marietta acting through its agent, Mr. Sylvester Gonzales, selected the means of access to the work site in question.
Williams, however, conceded on cross-examination that the Martin Marietta people never gave him directions. “They never tell us how to do the job.”3 He admits that he never had any discussions with anyone from Martin Marietta regarding his work, and he took no instructions, advice, orders, or anything in that nature from Martin Marietta, but only from Diaz. Raymond Willard, R & E’s superintendent on the job, confirmed that Martin Marietta employees exercised no control over the manner in which R & E employees were working. Under such circumstances, and with his clear understanding that he took all of his orders from his R & E supervisor, Diaz, Williams could in no way have understood Gonzales’ illustration on how to reach the roof as an order or direction to use the metal ladder and to walk over the conduit pipes to reach the roof.4
Had Williams fallen on his first trip to the roof, plaintiff might have established a case for liability on the theory that Gonzales’ response to Williams’ inquiry, although not a direction, misled him to take a dangerous route to the substation roof. But Williams did not fall on May 5. He admittedly made the passage up and down the metal ladder and across the conduit three to four times per day during the six days he worked through May 16, or at least twenty-four times before the accident. After his first journey to the roof, Williams knew it was dangerous. Thus, he cannot be heard to say, as he did at trial, that he saw nothing wrong with the route but that Martin Marietta negligently provided him with dangerous access to his work site. *1044See Frasca v. Prudential Grace Lines, Inc., 394 F.Supp. 1092, 1099-1102 (D.Md.1975) (although shipowner might have been liable for injuries sustained during longshoremen’s first descent down hatch, “reasonable minds could not differ concerning the unforeseeability that, even though the condition became worse during the day, the longshoremen would continue to go in and out of the hold on at least 25-30 separate occasions without even protecting themselves by ... the use of a safer, alternate route.....”).
Williams’ expertise was in construction; as part of his duties with R & E he was accustomed to getting to “some difficult places.” The ladder-conduit route, however, was obviously dangerous. Indeed, Williams produced an expert witness at trial, Finch, a consulting engineer, who testified that the problem with the conduit access to the roof was that “these are plastic coated pipes. Very round. It is not a proper surface to be used for a passageway. A bonafied [sic] travelway would have had a bonified [sic] legitimate walking surface as well as rails to hold onto to the work site.”
Williams obviously was not a novice around construction work. As an experienced pipefitter, he knew or should have known the dangers in walking on elevated, round, plastic coated, slippery pipes. By virtue of his training and experience with pipework, he was more sensitive to the danger than the property owner. He could not continue to walk over these pipes day in and day out, three and four times a day, and eleven days later shift responsibility by claiming there was no other access route to the eight foot roof. In fact, there was another means of access to the roof. Willard, R & E’s superintendent, testified that he used a different and safe way to the roof. He testified that R & E had provided movable ladders to enable its workmen to gain access to the roof, and that R & E had the responsibility for providing access and equipment to get its men to the work site. Indeed, Williams himself conceded that there were many areas around the structure where one could put a ladder.5 Under these circumstances, there can be no duty on the part of Martin Marietta to protect against a danger that was glaringly obvious to anyone, and to Williams in particular.6
Although we must indulge in the presumption that Williams’ testimony concerning his cursory conversation with Gonzales is true and give Williams the benefit of every reasonable favorable inference to be drawn from all the evidence, these rules do not require us to “disregard the dictates of common reason and to accept as correct or true that which obviously under all the circumstances in evidence cannot be correct or true; nor to give plaintiff the benefit of any other than reasonable inferences____ The plaintiff is bound by his own testimony; may not have the benefit of or resort to the support of evidence inconsistent with such testimony, and conceded facts may not be disregarded.” Larrea v. Ozark Water Ski Thrill Show, Inc., 562 S.W.2d 790, 792 (Mo.App.1978) (quoting Levin v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 535 S.W.2d 525, 527 (Mo.App.1976)).
The owner of property who engages an independent contractor to restructure a *1045plant for him is not an insurer of the safety of the employees of the contractor and cannot be held liable for an injury resulting from a danger which was obvious or which should have been observed in the exercise of ordinary care. Elder v. Pacific Tel. & Tel. Co., 66 Cal.App.3d 638, 136 Cal.Rptr. 203, 208 (1977). Even if Gonzales showed Williams a dangerous route to the roof, Williams, had he been concerned, had other alternatives.7 I do not agree with the majority that the feasibility of alternative means of access presented “an issue for resolution to the jury.” Maj. op. at 11. The owner of property, especially an industrial plant under alteration or reconstruction, is under no duty to reconstruct the premises so as to obviate known and obvious dangers. Hokanson v. Joplin Rendering Co., 509 S.W.2d 107, 111 (Mo.1974). “In determining the extent of preparation which an invitee is entitled to expect to be made for his protection, the nature of the land and the purposes for which it is used are of great importance.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343 comment 3 (1965). Workmen engaged in plant reconstruction must assume all normal, obvious, or ordinary risks accompanying the use of the premises:
The duty to provide a reasonably safe place in which to work is relative to the nature of the invited endeavor and does not entail the elimination of potential operational hazards which are obvious and visible to the invitee upon ordinary observation____ This is especially so when the invitee is an experienced laborer hired either to correct the very danger present or to perform his tasks amidst the visible hazards. The landowner may assume that the worker, or his superiors, are possessed of sufficient skill to recognize the degree of danger involved and to adjust their methods of work accordingly. Thus the unimpaired line of holdings to the effect that the duly to provide a reasonably safe working place for employees of an independent contractor does not relate to known hazards which are part of or incidental to the very work the contractor was hired to perform.
Wolczak v. National Elec. Prods. Corp., 66 N.J.Super. 64, 168 A.2d 412 (1961) (citations omitted).
Under section 343A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts dealing with known or obvious dangers, “a possessor of land” is not liable to his invitees for physical harm caused to them by any activity or condition on the land whose danger is known or obvious to them, unless the possessor should anticipate the harm despite such knowledge or obviousness. We do not have here a situation where the invitee is a patron of a store, hotel, theater, or office building who is entitled to expect that the owner of the property will have made far greater preparation to secure the safety of invitees than will have been made by the owner of an industrial plant about to undergo alteration by the invitees. We have before us commercial construction where the contractor and his employees expect certain risks and are prepared to cope with them. Martin Marietta had no reason, despite the alleged conversation between Gonzales and Williams on May 5, to anticipate any harm to Williams in gaining access to the roof. If the means of access shown by Gonzales was dangerous, Williams had ample opportunity to know of it and to take corrective action. Williams was clearly in the best position — at least as of his twenty-fourth trip over the pipes — to anticipate and protect himself against the obvious danger posed.
Courts have frequently reversed judgments entered for invitee plaintiffs where the danger to them was obvious. For example, in Gowdy v. United States, 412 F.2d 525 (6th Cir.1969), the Sixth Circuit reversed a judgment of the district court in plaintiffs favor and remanded with instructions to dismiss the complaint where the plaintiff, the employee of an independent contractor, fell from the roof of a lighthouse which did not have guardrails. According to the court:
*1046Since the Government may not be held liable without fault, it follows that the only basis for liability is negligence, if any, of government employees in failing to warn Gowdy of the danger or in failing to provide guardrails to prevent the fall. But the government was not required to warn Gowdy of something which he admitted that he already knew, namely, that no guardrail was on the flat roof and that it was dangerous for him to work too close to the edge of the roof because he might lose his balance and fall. Neither was the Government, under such circumstances, required to provide a guardrail. Thus we hold that the Government, as the owner of this flat roof, could not have anticipated that a reasonably careful workman would not protect himself from the known and obvious danger here involved.
Id. at 535. Similarly in this case, Martin Marietta was not required to inform Williams that a ladder was safer than negotiating the conduits, because after more than twenty-four trips to the roof even a layman — let alone an expert with four years experience — would be aware of the danger. See Frasca v. Prudential Grace Lines, Inc., 394 F.Supp. 1092, 1099-1102 (D.Md.1975) (granting judgment n.o.v. where obviousness of grease and oil on ladder’s rungs relieved shipowner of duty to longshoreman: “Clearly, if the accident had occurred in the early morning upon the first descent down the hatch, a jury could find the shipowner liable ... [but] reasonable minds could not differ concerning the unforeseeability that, even though the condition became worse during the day, the longshoremen would continue to go in and out of the hold on at least 25-30 separate occasions without even protecting themselves by ... the use of a safer, alternate route,____”).
Again, in Hokanson v. Joplin Rendering Co., 509 S.W.2d 107 (Mo.1974), the court considered the claim of a plaintiff who was employed by an independent contractor engaged to install a rendering machine in the defendant’s plant. The plaintiff lost his left hand in rotating machinery after the base of his ladder slipped out from under him. Both the floor and the base of the ladder — as well as almost everything else in the plant — was inordinantly greasy. Nevertheless, after looking to sections 343 and 343A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, the court disregarded the jury’s verdict, reversed the trial court, and remanded with instructions to enter a directed verdict for the defendant, stating:
[W]e declare as a matter of law that there was no duty resting upon defendant to exercise reasonable care to protect plaintiff against danger, for the reason that there is no evidence of superior knowledge by defendant of the allegedly dangerous condition of the premises or the appliance. On the contary, there is an abundance of evidence, including plaintiff’s personal testimony, demonstrating beyond any possibility of difference of opinion on the question, that the dangers involved were open, obvious and apparent for all to see and that plaintiff’s personal knowledge and realization of the risk of harm was equal to (if not greater than) that attributable to defendant.
Id. at 110-11 (emphasis added).
In Laaker v. Hartman, 186 Neb. 774, 186 N.W.2d 494 (1971), the court set aside the plaintiff’s verdict upon a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. The plaintiff, an independent subcontractor, sued to recover for injuries sustained as a result of a fall from a ladder in a house under construction. The plaintiff fell while carrying scrap material from the second floor down a ladder which, on the third or fourth trip down, tipped to one side. In affirming the judgment notwithstanding the verdict the Nebraska Supreme Court observed that the absence of temporary stairs and the use of the ladder were apparent. The plaintiff was very familiar with ladders, their usage, and their failings, and the attendant hazards were open and obvious. “We are unable to ascertain wherein the defendant was guilty of any negligence. To the contrary, it appears that any negligence attendant upon the accident was necessarily that of the plaintiff.” Id. at 496.
*1047Because over a period of eleven days Williams traversed at least twenty-four times a path which presented a plainly obvious danger, Martin Marietta cannot legally be held liable for breaching any duty it owed to him. It was therefore error for the district court not to declare as a matter of law that the plaintiff had not established any liability on the part of Martin Marietta. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court should be reversed and the cause remanded with directions to set aside the verdict and judgment and enter judgment for the defendant in accordance with its motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict.

. With regard to safety, the memo stated, in relevant part:
Martin Marietta considers the safety of all workers at its plant sites to be of the highest priority. Contract safety procedures will be checked on a spot basis, but it must be stressed that each contractor at a Martin Marietta site is solely responsible for maintaining safe working conditions for its employees.

******

Contractors shall stress to their employees that safety is a high priority and shall enforce safety requirements with their employees. Workers who refuse to comply shall be disciplined.

. Gonzales denied having any conversation with Williams with respect to access to the roof. Gonzales testified that the metal ladder did not go "to an area where the contractor had to work.” Although seldom used, its purpose was to gain access to the upper roof to service the air conditioning equipment. He did not know contractor employees were using it to gain access to the lower roof. Martin Marietta had nothing to be maintained on the lower roof and no ladder for access to it.

. Williams further testified:
Q: And your dealing was strictly with Tito Diaz, the Riggers and Erectors supervisor?
A: Yes.
Q: And you spoke to Tito Diaz and he told you what to do, and if you had any complaints and you spoke to Tito?
A: Yes.
Q: You never had any complaint about the work site?
A: No, sir.
Q: You never once asked Mr. Diaz to get a ladder or scaffold to get you up there where you were supposed to work?
A: No, sir.

. Walking over the conduits violated Martin Marietta policy. Willard, R & E’s superintendent, acknowledged "you are not supposed to walk on conduits.”

. Williams testified:
Q: After being out to the plant since then, do you agree that there are lots of other ways you could have gotten up to the roof?
A: There are other ways.
Q: Have you ever asked Mr. Tito Diaz for a ladder to get up on the other side?
A: No, sir.
Q: Did you ever ask for a cherry picker?
A: No, sir.
Q: Did you think about using scaffolding?
A: Where I had to run the pipes for relocation, it would have been difficult to put scaffolding there.
Q; Have you ever asked for a ladder or any equipment so you wouldn't have to go up on this ladder?
A: No, sir. I asked Mr. Gonzales how to get up on the roof and he showed me that way and I used that way.

. Contrary to the suggestion of the majority, maj. op. 17 n. 3,1 do not conclude that liability is precluded by Williams’ "assumption of the risk.” Rather, as the cited cases infra demonstrate, my conclusion is that Martin Marietta can have no duty to protect against a danger that is plainly obvious.

. Williams admitted that he never told his R & E supervisor that he would rather have a different means of access. It never occurred to him that there was something wrong in getting to the roof that way.