Simmons v. Amerada Hess Corp.

• Decision Date: 18 June 1980
• Docket Number: No. 78-3650,78-3650
• Citation: 619 F.2d 440
• Parties: Barry G. SIMMONS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. AMERADA HESS CORPORATION and Brown & Root, Inc., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 440

619 F.2d 440

Barry G. SIMMONS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. AMERADA HESS CORPORATION and Brown & Root, Inc., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 78-3650.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

June 18, 1980.

William E. Andrews, Jr., Purvis, Miss., for plaintiff-appellant.

Zachery & Gillespie, Jere R. Ramsay, George E. Gillespie, Hattiesburg, Miss., for Brown & Root.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

Before WISDOM, RONEY and HATCHETT, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

This case involves a settled doctrine of Mississippi negligence law: An act which merely furnishes the condition or occasion upon which injuries are received, but which does not put in motion the agency by or through which the injuries are inflicted, does not constitute the proximate cause of the harm. Mississippi City Lines, Inc. v. Bullock, 194 Miss. 630, 13 So.2d 34, 36 (1943). Based on this doctrine, we affirm the district court's entry of summary judgment against an injured plaintiff in favor of defendant, and decide that defendant's motion was not premature, as argued by plaintiff, because the as yet uncompleted discovery would not have created an issue of fact on this controlling principle. Because the controlling facts had been developed fully, any issues created by further discovery would not defeat the summary judgment.

Plaintiff Barry G. Simmons was injured while working as an industrial employee of Broome Construction Co. Broome and defendant Brown & Root, Inc. had been hired by Amerada Hess Corp. to perform maintenance on Hess' Purvis, Mississippi, refinery during July of 1977. A Brown & Root repair crew on July 27 had completed work on a valve mechanism at the refinery, but had apparently misaligned two valves in a way that made any attempt to reposition them potentially dangerous. The following day a Broome Construction Co. crew attempted to remove the valves and place them in their proper configuration.

The first valve was repositioned by the crew without incident. While attempting to lower and remove the second valve, however, plaintiff Simmons was struck by the valve in his back and injured. The Broome crew was acting under the supervision of a Hess foreman, and was using equipment furnished by Hess. There were no Brown & Root employees at the site at the time, that firm's work in the area having been completed the previous day.

Only Brown & Root's alleged negligence is at issue on this appeal. The claim against Amerada Hess Corp. was dismissed by the district court without prejudice on plaintiff's motion.

Although the district court's summary judgment states merely that there was no genuine issue of material fact as to the liability of Brown & Root, and "that as a matter of law there is no actionable negligence by the Defendant, Brown & Root, Inc.," it is apparent the district court's conclusion was predicated on the Mississippi negligence principle of remote causation:

(N)egligence is remote and non-actionable which merely causes a person to be at a particular place at a particular time where such person is injured as a result of the negligent act of another, who puts in motion a different and intervening cause which efficiently leads in unbroken sequence to the injury. . . . If the act complained of is only a remote cause, superseded by an independent, efficient intervening cause that leads in unbroken sequence to the injury, the original negligent act is not a proximate, but a remote, cause.

Robison v. McDowell, 247 So.2d 686, 689 (Miss.1971); see Prarie...