Court Opinion

ID: 9541834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:28:55.644629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:04:58.282780
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with the special concurrence and dissent of Justice Brown, and would add additionally.
*903Although I might have joined in the dissent of Justice Rose in Noonan v. Texaco, Inc., Wyo., 713 P.2d 160 (1986), had I been serving as a member of the court at that time, it would seem from the present opinion of this court that Noonan lasted only these few months.
However, my concern arises not from the effect on Noonan by this decision, but that we now go much further than was even claimed as proper in the Noonan dissent.
This court cannot separate the present facts from the legal principle discussed. In result it would seem that a special area of near absolute liability devolves upon owners who employ experts to provide services in activities where carelessness invokes a particular risk of injury, such as electrical transmission companies or any other of the dangerous occupations which could even include the most dangerous of all locations, our personal home, where more accidents do occur.
This concern is not idly raised, since the court accepts neither Holdaway v. Gustanson, 546 F.Supp. 231 (D.C.Wyo.1982), rev’d sub nom Holdaway v. Amoco Production Co., 751 F.2d 1129 (10th Cir.1984), nor the second case derived from the Circuit Court, Holdaway v. Amoco Production Company, supra, itself, by rejecting the exception rule for employees of an independent contractor as creating a duty to protect for hazards which are incidental to or part of the very work which the contractor was hired to perform.
I am concerned that the homeowner will assume liability for the electricians who work on the home without turning off the electricity, and each and every other occupational responsbility which invokes danger if carelessly pursued by the personnel of the independent contractor which have been selected for job expertise.
Seriously questioned is the rationale of the contention that justification for nonlia-bility arises from lack of control. Creation of the rule of control in the fashion implemented in this case creates the duty, since the owner will always have the opportunity to tell the expert how the expert should conduct his business. Consequently, ownership and control become synonymous. As owner, some control over the jobsite exists by the fact of ownership.
By the court’s own example in this case, a utility company would be responsible for injury to an independent-contractor employee, unless power was disconnected, even though a major societal adversity would result to the third-party user from the lack of electricity. The nature of the functioning economy does not always afford opportunity to disconnect service.-
To otherwise define the result is to say that the decision in this case is determined by the way the rule is stated by the court. Obviously, an owner can always have the electricity turned off in order to have services performed. When an expert is employed, the necessity to disconnect should properly be in its hands and at its request. In this case, the tower painting operation did not invoke any unusual risk if approached with the expected realization that all electricity like dynamite, wild animals, motor vehicles, and construction operation, etc., can invoke an opportunity for injury if not approached with the expected care. Actually, Jones could have safely climbed up on the transformer platform itself if the extreme degree of care had been utilized for adequate grounding and adjacency determinations (two feet, as described by the testimony in the record).
Every square inch of each transformer platform is not necessarily dangerous, which is demonstrable by the fact that transformers are changed and electric utilities serviced, sometimes in very adverse climatic conditions.
The court, by the present opinion, has effectively promulgated a rule for owner absolute liability, even when experts are employed specifically to perform the necessary work. This decision is not supported by case authority. Although the majority cite Wolczak v. National Electric Products Corporation, 66 N.J.Super. 64, 168 A.2d 412 (1961), the present result in this case is directly contrary to that authority.
*904“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. [Citations.] 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 workei’, 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 duty 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. [Citations.]
“It is significant to note that each of the aforementioned decisions is explainable in terms of the equation, in Meistrich v. Casino Arena Attractions, Inc., 31 N.J. 44, 48-50, 155 A.2d 90 (1959), of assumption of risk in its primary sense and lack of duty or failure to breach the duty owed. These doctrines, traceable to the law of master-servant, constitute a shorthand description of that species of occupational risk which, because of its obvious nature, its intimate relation to the task being performed, and the presumed expertise of the person encountering it, was formerly non-remediable if injury resulted and is now compensable solely through the medium of workmen’s compensation laws. * * * The extension of this concept to the realm of the employer-independent contractor tort relationship is amply warranted by the obvious reliance of the employer on the skills of one hired to perform a task generally unrelated to the employer’s own work.” 168 A.2d at 417-418.
Meistrich v. Casino Arena Attractions, Inc., 31 N.J. 44, 155 A.2d 90, 82 A.L.R.2d 1208 (1959), a case considered by this court in its opinion, affords a thoughtful and philosophic review of the basic theories and premises of the legal issues involved.
An obfuscation now occurs by creating a new principle of delegated control. In this case, Automation was contracted to build an electrical transmission system which included painting the required towers. Such painting, which was not completed by the time of initiation of use, was being done thereafter in an operation in the proximity of an activated electrical system. Although the painting activity then remained as a part of the original construction requirement, it will likely be hereafter repeated by other contractors as maintenance during the life of usage if the oil field has a sufficiently extended life. Then, or hereafter, carelessness is always dangerous in electrical service work, as in many other occupations. Care and knowledge by the employed expert is the expectancy of the bargain whereby the contractor is employed. It is clear from the present record that no reason existed for Jones to climb on the platform,
Holdaway v. Gustanson, supra, which the court previously approved in Noonan as stating the proper rule despite reversal by the Circuit Court, stated:
“Futhermore, Amoco is not obligated to protect the employees of CWS from hazards which are incidental or part of the very work which CWS was hired to perform. Vecchio [v. AnHeuser-Busch, 328 F.2d 714, 718 (2d Cir.1964).] The activity which led to the injury was conducted by CWS and the danger arises out of the activity itself. In such a situation, the responsibility is that of CWS and not Amoco.” 546 F.Supp. at 233.
That principle, in itself, was not reversed by the Circuit Court which in Holdaway v. Amoco Production Company, supra, stated:
“ * * * Regardless of whether the contract purports to make CWS an independent contractor, however, it will not protect Amoco if it may be inferred from facts and circumstances revealed by thé evidence that the real relationship be*905tween Amoco and CWS was that of master and servant.” 751 F.2d at 1130.
Control and supervision, not control alone as presumed from ownership, is the test for liability without regard for the exception rule quoted in Holdaway v. Gustanson of the expert employed to perform the work from which the dangerous exposure arises. McKee v. Pacific Power & Light Co., Wyo., 417 P.2d 426 (1966); Parsons v. Amerada Hess Corp., 422 F.2d 610 (10th Cir.1970); Texaco, Inc. v. Pruitt, 396 F.2d 237 (10th Cir.1968). See also Sherman v. Platte County, Wyo., 642 P.2d 787 (1982); Bluejacket v. Carney, Wyo., 550 P.2d 494 (1976); LeGrande v. Misner, Wyo., 490 P.2d 1252 (1971); and Watts v. Holmes, Wyo., 386 P.2d 718 (1963).
Factually, what is announced by the court in this case as its decision is that Chevron, in the absence of any request, should have made it easier for Automation to have requested that the operation of the oil field be shut down to avoid danger to a careless employee who might be climbing on a transformer platform, so that the tower and support underneath could be painted. How can you make a request easier than a request, since in either case you only have to ask?
Despite this writer’s disafinity for disposition of negligence actions by summary-judgment decision, it is submitted that the decision of the trial court in this case was appropriate and well justified.
In reversal of the trial court, we now create a new rule with nefarious and indeterminate implications. It would seem that this court sets the law adrift somewhere between the Sargasso Sea1 and Matagorda County, Texas. Compare this writer’s dissenting opinion in DeJulio v. Foster, 715 P.2d 182 (1986), with On the Docket, “There is more to the mess in U.S. courtrooms than greedy attorneys and vindictive juries. Consider ...” Greene, The hanging judges of business, Forbes, April 7, 1986, at 62, 64, wherein Matagorda County, Texas, is described as, “Where plaintiffs rule,” as the article attributes proportionate judicial responsibility to the present litigious status of our society.

. See Albernaz v. United States, 450 U.S. 333, 101 S.Ct. 1137, 67 L.Ed.2d 275 (1981), and State v. Carter, Wyo., 714 P.2d 1217, 1222 n. 2 (1986), Urbigkit, J., dissenting.