Bowen v. Lee Process Systems Co.

• Decision Date: 17 July 2000
• Docket Number: No. 3224.,3224.
• Citation: 536 S.E.2d 86,342 S.C. 232
• Court: South Carolina Court of Appeals
• Parties: Charles B. BOWEN, Jr., as the Administrator of the Estate of Paul Edward Morris, Appellant, v. LEE PROCESS SYSTEMS COMPANY, Lee Industries, Inc., Van Waters & Rogers, Inc., TMC Construction Co., Inc., GM Mechanical Corporation, Piedmont, Olsen, Hensley, Inc., and Procaps Machine Corp., Defendants, of whom TMC CONSTRUCTION CO., INC., G-M Mechanical Corporation, and Piedmont, Olsen, Hensley, Inc., are, Respondents.

342 S.C. 232

536 S.E.2d 86

Charles B. BOWEN, Jr., as the Administrator of the Estate of Paul Edward Morris, Appellant, v. LEE PROCESS SYSTEMS COMPANY, Lee Industries, Inc., Van Waters & Rogers, Inc., TMC Construction Co., Inc., GM Mechanical Corporation, Piedmont, Olsen, Hensley, Inc., and Procaps Machine Corp., Defendants, of whom TMC CONSTRUCTION CO., INC., G-M Mechanical Corporation, and Piedmont, Olsen, Hensley, Inc., are, Respondents.

No. 3224.

Court of Appeals of South Carolina.

Submitted June 5, 2000.

Decided July 17, 2000.

William A. Jordan, of Greenville, for appellant.

Karl S. Brehmer, of Brown & Brehmer, of Columbia; Donald A. Harper and N. Ward Lambert, both of The Harper Law Firm; and Samuel W. Outten, of Leatherwood, Walker, Todd & Mann, all of Greenville, for respondents. GOOLSBY, Judge:

Charles Bowen, on behalf of decedent Paul Morris, filed complaints alleging breach of implied warranty, negligence, and gross negligence against TMC Construction Co., Inc., G-M Mechanical Corporation, and Piedmont, Olsen, Hensley, Inc. (collectively "Defendants"). The trial court initially granted summary judgment to Defendants on the implied warranty and negligence claims. Following a hearing on Defendants motions to reconsider, the court issued a form order granting summary judgment on the remaining gross negligence claim.¹ Bowen appeals from the order on reconsideration.² We vacate and remand.³

BACKGROUND

Paul Morris was employed as a gel prep operator at General Nutrition Corporation's vitamin manufacturing plant in Greenville. At the time of the accident, Morris was cleaning pressure vessels, or "gel melters." Gel melters, essentially giant mixers, utilize steam-generated heat to melt the gelatin used in making vitamin "gelcaps."

On May 11, 1993, around 5:00 p.m., Morris began cleaning a gel melter by mixing water and trisodium phosphate (TSP) in the vessel's bowl and turning on its steam jacket.⁴ Because the vessel's temperature gauge was broken, Morris had been instructed to let the steam heat the TSP mixture for approximately fifteen minutes. Thereafter, Morris either opened the vessel's rubber-sealed porthole to check the mixture or the overheated mixture in the pressurized container exploded and blew the porthole's cover off. Morris was doused with the scalding hot TSP mixture. Despite extensive treatment at the Augusta Regional Medical Center, Morris died fifteen days later, having suffered chemical and thermal burns over eighty-two per cent of his body.

LAW/ANALYSIS

Summary judgment is proper when it is clear there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.⁵ Summary judgment should be granted when plain, palpable, and undisputable facts exist upon which reasonable minds cannot differ.⁶ To determine whether an issue of fact exists, the court must view the evidence and all its inferences in a light most favorable to the nonmoving party.⁷

On appeal from the grant of summary judgment, an appellate court must determine whether the trial court's stated grounds for its decision are supported by the record.⁸ It is our duty to undertake a thorough and meaningful review of the trial court's order and the entire record on appeal. Where, as here, the trial court fails to articulate the reasons for its action on the record or enter a written order outlining its rationale, we simply cannot perform our designated function.⁹

We therefore hold a trial court's order on summary judgment must set out facts and accompanying legal analysis sufficient to permit meaningful appellate review.¹⁰ Such an order must "include those facts which the circuit court finds relevant, determinative of the issues and undisputed."¹¹ In doing so, the trial court should "provide clear notice to all parties and the reviewing court as to the rationale applied in granting ... summary judgment."¹²

We are aware that some courts believe "factual findings" to be ill-advised in that they might imply that a fact question was presented which would warrant denial of the summary judgment motion. In our opinion, however, the better view is that these findings are helpful in indicating the basis upon which the trial court made its decision and what it understood to be the undisputed facts for granting the summary judgment motion.¹³

Furthermore, the "facts" to which we refer are not factual findings in the ordinary sense as contemplated in our rules of procedure.¹⁴ Rather, these factual findings are statements made by the court as it views the evidence and its inferences in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party.¹⁵ In Fayette County National Bank v. Lilly,¹⁶ the West Virginia Supreme Court was faced with an identical procedural rule and prior case law stating that it was "totally improper for the trial court to make findings of fact in connection with granting a summary judgment [motion] as the very nature of summary judgment is that there is no genuine issue of material fact, entitling the moving party to judgment as a matter of law."¹⁷ In reconciling seemingly opposing contentions, the court there stated:

We are fully cognizant that a majority of jurisdictions do not require trial courts to set out findings in orders granting summary judgment.... We believe this approach is grounded in blind adherence to fictional legal form[ ] that sacrifices concrete legal substance. Requiring that meaningful findings be set out in orders granting summary judgment does not somehow transform circuit court[ ]s into triers of fact—engaging in weighing [evidence] and credibility determinations that are prerequisites for disputed jury facts. In reviewing a circuit court's order granting summary judgment this Court, like all reviewing courts, engages in the same type of analysis as the circuit court.... In the final analysis, it is illogical to prohibit circuit courts from making meaningful findings in granting summary judgment.... [W]e are [simply] requiring meaningful findings that will guide our review of decisions [on] summary judgment.... To be clear, being explicit about its reasoning not only assists the hearing tribunal in analyzing legal claims and the equities of the situation, but also facilitates appellate review.¹⁸

At least one federal circuit has also addressed the apparent contradiction:

The judicial function relative to fact-analysis on a motion for summary judgment is `limited to ascertaining whether any factual issue pertinent to the controversy exists; it does not extend to resolution of any such issue.' A `finding of fact' by the district court in a summary judgment proceeding thus constitutes only a finding that no genuine, material issue exists as to that fact; by the nature of summary judgment, it cannot be an indication that the trial court has weighed the evidence and found a fact in the traditional sense. `Findings of fact' in a summary judgment proceeding are therefore not truly findings of fact and should perhaps bear a different label. By whatever name such `findings' take, they can be helpful.... `Findings of fact' also help an appellate court `in making clear the basis for the trial court's decision and in indicating what that court understood to be the undisputed facts on which summary judgment was granted.' Identifying the undisputed material facts and indicating the basis for summary judgment are the sole purposes of `findings of fact' on summary judgment.¹⁹

In this instance, we are presented with a seven-volume record on appeal involving the tragic death of a twenty-eight-year-old father of four. Other than the trial court's cursory form order, the record contains only one declaration from the bench pertinent to the grant of summary judgment:

I'm sorry, Mr. Jordan, I just really can't—I realize I could take the easy way out, but I just don't see—I just don't see how the evidence in the record can establish a duty on the part of the construction defendants that was breached in some grossly negligent manner.

We are unable to discern from this statement whether the court found Defendants owed no duty to Bowen, whether they owed a duty to Bowen and breached it, or whether they were negligent, but not grossly negligent.²⁰ Moreover, our initial review of the record leads us to determine the propriety of summary judgment was a rather close question. It is imperative, then, that the trial court state the material facts it found undisputed and the applicable law supporting its grant of summary judgment to Defendants.

We vacate summary judgment on Bowen's claims of gross negligence and remand the case to the trial court for a written order identifying the facts and accompanying legal analysis upon which it relied in granting Defendants' summary judgment motion.²¹

VACATED AND REMANDED.

CURETON and SHULER, JJ., concur.

1. The language of the trial court's form order read as follows:

The motion to reconsider, by defendants Piedmont, GM Mechanical & TMC, is granted and summary judgment is granted as to the remaining gross negligence action against these defendants.

2. Defendants contend the sole issue for our consideration is the grant of summary judgment on gross negligence because Bowen failed to reference the first order on the breach of warranty and simple negligence claims in his Notice of Appeal. We agree that only the gross negligence claims remain, but do so for a different reason. Bowen failed to brief any issue pertaining to theories of implied warranty or negligence. Accordingly, we deem any issue related to these claims abandoned and not preserved for our review. See First Sav. Bank v. McLean, 314 S.C. 361, 444 S.E.2d 513 (1994)

(failure to provide arguments or supporting authority for an issue renders it abandoned); O'Laughlin v. Windham, 330 S.C. 379, 498 S.E.2d 689 (Ct.App.1998) (issues are deemed abandoned and not preserved for appellate review if an appellant fails to argue and offer supporting authority for the error alleged).

...