Gill v. Eakin
| Decision Date | 23 February 1948 |
| Docket Number | 36678. |
| Citation | 33 So.2d 821,203 Miss. 204 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | GILL v. EAKIN. |
Henry & Barbour, of Yazoo City, Watkins & Eager, of Jackson, and V. B. Montgomery, of Belzoni, for appellant.
J G. Holmes, of Yazoo City, for appellee.
A jury in the Circuit Court of Humphreys County awarded appellee a verdict against appellant, which was as follows: 'We, the jury, find in favor of the plaintiff in the amount of $10,000 actual damages, and $5,000 punitive damages.' This verdict was returned by the jury in an action whereby appellee sought to recover from appellant $75,000 actual damages, and $10,000 punitive damages, alleged to have accrued to the plaintiff 'by reason of a butane gas explosion caused by the defendant's gross negligence tantamount to willfulness in installing and connecting a butane gas system in the home occupied by the plaintiff and resulting in the serious and permanent injury of the plaintiff and the injury and death of his wife.'
Appellant brought the case here on direct appeal, presenting and arguing two assignments of error. The first is, that he should have been granted a directed verdict; the second, that the court erred in permitting the award of $5,000 punitive damages to stand, over his objections and protests. No point was raised in the court below as to the form of the verdict or here. We therefore do not discuss it. Our only purpose in setting it out in full is to demonstrate how the division in damages is revealed in the record. Appellant's motion for a new trial was overruled. The trial court denied a motion by appellee for a new trial on the complaint that the verdict as to compensatory damages was inadequate, and accordingly he seeks reversal of that portion of the verdict.
Appellee aged thirty-three, and his wife, aged thirty, had been happily married for approximately nine years, and at the time of the tragic event in this case, were harmoniously and contentedly residing with appellee's father, J. W. Eakin in the latter's one-story frame home on his farm in Holmes County. Appellee and his wife had no children, and, of course, appellee became her sole heir at her death, occurring as set out, post. Apparently, to gratify the wishes of his son and daughter-in-law, J. W. Eakin consented to install a system of heating by the use of butane gas, and, for that purpose, entered into a contract with appellant, Gill, to furnish the necessary equipment. Install and connect the system.
Sufficient equipment was not then available to complete the installation and connection of the entire system. The deficiency was in heaters. Their lack caused certain risers, or pipes, leading from the storage tank outdoors and coming into the house through the floors of the various rooms, to which the heaters were later to be attached when available, to require sealing against leakage in the meantime. One of such risers was in a small unoccupied room opening into the bed chamber of J. W. Eakin, and in the latter there was a lighted heater on the morning of the explosion. The agents and employees of appellant had left the afternoon of February 14, 1946, their work apparently finished except as to the postponed connection of heaters with the unattached risers. When Mrs. Merrill Eakin opened the closed door of the little room about 7 o'clock of the following morning, the residence was practically blown apart in the affected portions, due to the explosion of gas seepage from the riser in the small room; permeating the air in the adjoining bedroom; and there coming into contact with the lighted heater.
Appellee's wife was horribly burned and injured, and, after lingering in great mental anguish and physical agony for approximately fifteen hours, she died at a hospital in a nearby town. Appellee also was badly burned and hurt, suffered excruciatingly, and was hospitalized. He was in a circulatory collapse; suffered third degree burns of the upper trunk, the hands, knees and ears; and his fingernails were burned away. He remained in the hospital six weeks, and for awhile continued to receive treatment after his discharge. He was, he testified (and was corroborated by his doctor), permanently disabled. The appellee paid total expenses for hospital, medical, and doctors' services, of $3,025.69. For all of these elements of damages, the jury awarded him $10,000 as compensation. Subtracting from this amount the above expenditures by appellee, he was awarded for the suffering of himself and wife, her death, and his permanent injury, the exact sum of $6,974.31.
The injuries and damage were proximately caused, according to appellee, and this the jury accepted to be true, by the negligence of appellant in failing to seal completely the riser in the small room, from which the gas allegedly escaped and exploded when it made contact with the lighted heater, as stated, supra.
On the other hand, the appellant contends that, although she was warned of the danger of...
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