Craghead v. United States, 281-69

• Decision Date: 17 March 1970
• Docket Number: 282-69.,No. 281-69,281-69
• Citation: 423 F.2d 664
• Parties: Leo CRAGHEAD, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee. Junior SMITH, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

423 F.2d 664 (1970)

Leo CRAGHEAD, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

Junior SMITH, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

Nos. 281-69, 282-69.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

March 17, 1970.

David E. Deatherage, Tulsa, Okl., for appellants.

Leonard Schaitman, Dept. of Justice (William D. Ruckelshaus, Asst. Atty. Gen., Richard A. Pyle, U. S. Atty., and Morton Hollander, Dept. of Justice, on the brief), for appellee.

Before BREITENSTEIN and HOLLOWAY, Circuit Judges and CHRISTENSEN, District Judge.

CHRISTENSEN, District Judge.

These two tort claim actions are considered together here as they were below, since the circumstances in each are essentially the same and the controlling principles of law are identical. After both cases had become at issue, special interrogatories had been answered and pre-trial conferences had been held, the trial court granted summary judgments in favor of the defendants. Whether the summary judgments were appropriate and justified upon the record before the trial court under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 56 is the sole question presented here.

In the first case, plaintiff Craghead was injured on June 28, 1968 while employed as a carpenter-welder by Perini-M-K-Leavell, an independent contractor who was employed by the government for work on the Robert S. Kerr Lock and Dam, Sallisaw, Oklahoma. He was acting in the course of his employment when a scaffold on which he was standing fell. It was asserted by Craghead, and we shall assume, that one of the bolts horizontally protruding from the base of a concrete pourer on which this scaffold or board rested was a "dummy bolt" without threads on it and that this "dummy bolt" was the reason the accident occurred. It is not questioned that the contractor was negligent. Craghead further claims that the United States through its Corps of Engineers "had the duty or undertook the duty to maintain and enforce safety standards and to inspect the work places, machinery and equipment used by the employee and to advise, report, counsel and recommend to the employer the existence of any unsafe, dangerous, hazardous or negligent condition thereabout and that such inspections were planned, periodic and directed to the safety of the employees on the project, including the welder-carpenter systems covered by plaintiff's employer's contract," and hence is liable under the Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346(b).

The assignments of negligence are proliferated in the complaint but all relate to the basic claims that the Corps of Engineers negligently failed in their claimed duty to provide a safe place to work, to supervise and inspect safety measures and to enforce safety standards, particularly in view of the inherently dangerous nature of the work contracted. In answer to an interrogatory concerning the basis of any claimed negligence by the government, the plaintiff Craghead simply referred to the allegations of his complaint.

Turning to the facts of the second case, plaintiff Smith was employed by Dravo Corporation in the State of Arkansas as a pile driver foreman on the same project as Craghead but at a different dam site. On July 31, 1966, Smith with other contractor's employees was engaged in removing a wooden template. For a time he was upon the workdeck of the template, but as the template was being raised, he started down an attached ladder. Nails pulled out allowing the bottom of the ladder to swing under and causing plaintiff to be thrown onto the ground. Smith's claims regarding negligence are precisely those of Craghead.

In regard to both cases, the trial court upon motions for summary judgment held that United States v. Page, 350 F.2d 28 (10th Cir. 1965), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 979, 86 S.Ct. 552, 15 L.Ed.2d 470 (1966), was controlling against the plaintiffs who are the appellants here. We agree that the cases were ripe for summary judgment and that there is no indication on the record that there were any...