Drennen Co. v. Jordan

• Decision Date: 17 April 1913
• Citation: 61 So. 938,181 Ala. 570
• Parties: DRENNEN CO. v. JORDAN.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

61 So. 938

181 Ala. 570

DRENNEN CO. v. JORDAN.

Supreme Court of Alabama

April 17, 1913

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; E.C. Crowe, Judge.

Action by Mrs. M.C. Jordan against the Drennen Company, a corporation. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Frank L. Ward, J.T. Stokeley, and R.H. Scrivner, all of Birmingham for appellant.

Morris Loveman and F.E. Blackburn, both of Birmingham, for appellee.

SAYRE J.

Appellee recovered judgment against the appellant corporation. The relation of the parties and the circumstances in which plaintiff received her injuries were these: The Drennen Company, a mercantile corporation, had let to an independent contractor a contract for the erection of its storehouse on a much frequented street in the city of Birmingham. The contractor had completed the building and had removed temporary structures placed around the outside of the building for the protection of pedestrians on the sidewalk while the storehouse was building. Defendant had accepted the building as complete, had moved in its stock of goods, and was selling them in the ordinary way of retail trade. Shortly afterwards some splotches or discolorations appeared on the walls of the second floor, and defendant employed another independent contractor to give the walls a coat of calcimine. This contractor employed workmen to do the work, and one of these carelessly ascended a stepladder which was not properly spread, and so tipped a bucket of the stuff he was applying over against a window, breaking the glass and precipitating a part of the contents of the bucket and some broken glass upon the sidewalk below, where plaintiff received some of the calcimine upon her clothing and in one of her eyes. She was not injured by the falling glass.

That the work was being done by servants of an independent contractor is not denied. But the appellee insists, in line with the trial court's treatment of the case, that it was competent for the jury to hold defendant corporation liable notwithstanding its employment of an independent contractor for either one of several reasons, to wit: The work to be performed was of such character that, however skillfully done, its performance was necessarily and intrinsically dangerous; or defendant failed to discharge its legal duty to keep its premises in a safe condition; or it violated the municipal ordinance in evidence, requiring, under penalty, that where a house, structure, or improvement extends above one story, "it shall be the duty of the builders, architect, or owner, to erect a temporary shed or structure over the sidewalk adjacent to which said improvement is being made, with a roof of sufficient strength to resist the force of all material which may fall from the walls of said improvement as the work progresses and will protect those passing along such sidewalk."

We are clear in the conclusion that none of these principles affected this case as against defendant. It seems hardly necessary to do more than state the proposition, covering, at once appellee's first two contentions severally and collectively, that to paint the inside walls of a building where they may be reached from an ordinary stepladder, is not to engage in the performance of a work necessarily and intrinsically dangerous to any one, certainly not to...