Clemmons v. Griffin

• Decision Date: 23 February 1998
• Docket Number: No. A98A0241.,A98A0241.
• Parties: CLEMMONS v. GRIFFIN.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

498 S.E.2d 99

230 Ga. App. 721

CLEMMONS v. GRIFFIN.

No. A98A0241.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

February 23, 1998.

Edward E. Boshears, Brunswick, for appellant.

Whelchel, Brown, Readdick & Bumgartner, Terry L. Readdick, Bradley J. Watkins, Brunswick, for appellee.

HAROLD R. BANKE, Senior Appellate Judge.

Ernest L. Clemmons, an experienced heating and air conditioning repairman, was seriously injured by an explosion which occurred while he was on a service call to repair the home air conditioning unit of Loretta T. Griffin. Clemmons appeals the summary judgment awarded to Griffin.

The evidence, when viewed in a light most favorable to the non-movant, showed that Clemmons and another person from Hall Heating & Air responded to a service call at Griffin's residence. After Clemmons replaced a burnt or corroded wire with a new piece of copper tubing, he then reconnected the wire to the terminal. When he flipped a switch on the power box located beside the unit, an explosion immediately resulted, inflicting severe second and third degree burns to Clemmons' face, neck, arms, and upper body.

After receiving workers' compensation benefits from his employer, Clemmons instituted a negligence action against the homeowner, Griffin, alleging that she breached a duty to warn him that an unqualified person had incorrectly rewired the air conditioning unit before his arrival. Clemmons theorized that an incompetent person had disconnected some of the wires to the compressor and then reconnected them to the wrong switch. Clemmons claimed that it was not possible for him to discover the hazard of the improper wiring before he turned the power back on. Clemmons also asserted that Griffin had put him at risk by improperly substituting copper tubing for fuses in the disconnect box.

Griffin moved for summary judgment contending that Clemmons failed to show that she had superior knowledge of the purported hazard. She claimed that no one other than the employees of Hall Heating & Air had ever worked on her unit or repaired it. According to Griffin, after the unit stopped cooling properly, she did not personally inspect it. Neither side offered any testimony from an independent expert and the whereabouts of the fire-damaged unit remain unknown. Clemmons appeals the summary judgment awarded to Griffin. Held:

The mere showing of the occurrence of an injury, without more, does not create a presumption of negligence. Rather, the true ground of liability is the owner's superior knowledge of the peril and the danger therefrom. Cook v. Home Depot, 214 Ga.App. 133, 134(1), 447 S.E.2d 35 (1994). As a general rule, a homeowner has a duty to warn an invitee, such as Clemmons, of dangers or defects of which the owner knew or in the exercise of ordinary care it was the owner's duty to know. Swanson v. Choate, 108 Ga.App. 152, 153(1), 132 S.E.2d 246 (1963). According to Griffin's undisputed testimony, she had only had the unit serviced on one other occasion about a year earlier and no one had worked on it in the interim. Griffin testified without contradiction that she had no knowledge about the maintenance and repair of air conditioning units and did not examine hers after it developed problems.

At summary judgment, Clemmons had the burden to come forward with specific evidence that Griffin's knowledge of the alleged hazard was superior to his. Schultheiss v. Prentiss Properties, 227 Ga.App. 560, 562, 489 S.E.2d 545 (1997). This he failed to do. Clemmons only offered his own speculative testimony that the explosion was a most unusual event which would not ordinarily occur absent negligence, more specifically, someone's tampering with the unit and the control box. However, he admitted that the explosion could have been caused by oil, or moisture mixed with Freon, or a lightning strike or by any number...