Goar v. Village of Stephen
| Decision Date | 30 November 1923 |
| Docket Number | 23,586 |
| Citation | 196 N.W. 171,157 Minn. 228 |
| Parties | GUNDA GOAR v. VILLAGE OF STEPHEN AND ANOTHER |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Action in the district court for Marshall county to recover $25,000 for injuries received while operating an electric iron. The case was tried before Watts, J., who at the close of the testimony denied separate motions of defendants for a directed verdict, and a jury which returned a verdict for $12,500. From orders denying their motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict but granting their motions for a new trial unless plaintiff consented to a reduction of the verdict to $8,500, defendants took separate appeals. Affirmed as to the village; reversed as to the company.
Statutory notice of injury sufficient.
1. Notice of injury from electrical burns, describing them and claiming that they were caused "as the natural consequence of * * * some defect in the wiring system and equipment" of the electric plant belonging to defendant village, and that the injuries were the result of the negligence of the village, its officers and employes, held a sufficient compliance with the statute. G.S. 1913, § 1786.
Municipality negligent in failure to inspect.
2. A municipal corporation maintaining an electric distributing plant owes to the public the duty of so inspecting and maintaining the same as to prevent change and deterioration from natural causes resulting in a dangerous condition. Where injury occurs because of a defect which could have been prevented by inspection, and there is a total failure to inspect for 17 months, the municipal corporation is negligent and liable accordingly.
Res ipsa loquitur applicable to escape of high power current.
3. The rule, res ipsa loquitur, is applicable where, in such a case a user of the electric current is injured by the escape into a dwelling of a high voltage current.
Question of negligence in construction one of fact.
4. Where primary and secondary electric wires are placed in such juxtaposition that, although the initial clearance is safe it might have been foreseen that, through natural causes, it would become so lessened as to be dangerous, and where a somewhat different but slightly more expensive method of construction would have prevented all danger, the question of negligence is one of fact.
When defect in construction is not proximate cause of injury.
5. But even where there is such a defect of construction, not presently and imminently dangerous when the contractor delivers and the owner accepts the work, and through natural causes the clearance between the wires is lessened and contact results so that the insulation is worn away and the resulting electrical connection sets at large the primary current and injury results; the original defect of construction is not the proximate cause, where, for more than 17 months after its acceptance of the plant, the municipal corporation owning and operating the system has wholly failed to make any inspection to discover and guard against such conditions. That negligence, though passive, is the proximate cause -- as much so as though it had been active.
B. B. Brett and W. E. Rowe, for appellant village.
Lancaster, Simpson, Junell & Dorsey, for appellant company.
H. O. Chommie, Julius J. Olson and Rasmus Hage, for respondent.
Action for personal injuries caused by electrical burns, wherein plaintiff had a verdict against both defendants, the village of Stephen, a municipal corporation, and Minnesota Electric Distributing Company. The business of the latter corporation is the installation of electric distributing plants and the generation and distribution of electricity in the territory served by it, which includes the village of Stephen.
Each defendant moved separately in the alternative for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or a new trial. The motions were denied upon condition that plaintiff consent to a reduction of the $12,500 verdict to $8,500. She so consented, but both defendants have appealed.
While in her own home in Stephen, plaintiff was injured on August 10, 1922, by a high voltage current, for the escape of which, from its proper conductors into the Goar dwelling, one or both of the defendants is responsible. For convenience, we refer to the parties as plaintiff, the village and the company.
The village maintains its own electric distributing plant. The current is generated by the company, sold to the village and delivered through a master meter situated on the village boundary. The property of the company in and its control of the current end at this master meter. The village takes it there, as its own property, and sells and distributes it to its inhabitants.
Formerly the village had an electric generating plant of its own, the use of which has been discontinued. In September, 1920, the company, as an independent contractor, undertook to reconstruct the distributing system of the village, according to plans and specifications prepared by the company for and accepted by the village. At the same time, apparently as a part of the same transaction, a contract was entered into for the sale of current by the company to the village.
The construction contract contains this:
"The contractor shall guarantee all apparatus and appliances and everything else shown herein and in drawings to be free from defects of any kind for a period of one (1) year from date of acceptance and shall make all repairs, adjustments and renewals for a period of one (1) year free of charge."
The work of construction was completed and the plant turned over to and accepted by the village on or about March 1, 1921. At or about that time, a representative of the company made a final inspection of the job, since which the company has had nothing to do with the plant or any part of it. It was not called upon, under its contract guarantee or otherwise, to make good any defects or do any work of repair, adjustment or renewal.
The accident occurred on August 10, 1922, approximately seventeen and one-half months after completion of the reconstruction and its acceptance by the village.
A part of the village plant was a transformer pole near plaintiff's home. It had three sets of double cross arms, in addition to and above those which carried the two transformer boxes. The top of the pole is about 30 feet from the ground. The top pair of cross arms run east and west and carry 5 high tension (2,300 volt) wires. The next lower pair of cross arms are at right angles to the upper set and carry 6 low tension service lines running east and west. Below these is a third pair of cross arms set in the same direction as the topmost pair and again carrying service wires running in a northerly and southerly direction. Next on the pole are 2 short cross arms, and, immediately below, a single cross arm, which support two transformer boxes, one on either side of the pole.
The function of the transformers is to "step down" the 2,300 volt current to one of 220 or 110 volts. The current is taken from the primary wire to the transformer box by means of "jumper" wires. On this pole there were 2 of them, one extending from each end of the transformer cross arms. The high tension wires coming from the south, and the service lines leading to the east, were "dead headed" on this pole. On the one remaining wire-bearing pair of cross arms, the third from the top, there were 5 service lines which reached to other poles and to a considerable distance each way, north and south.
In this situation it was necessary that the "jumper" wire, extending downward from the east end of the upper cross arms to the same end of the transformer cross arms directly beneath it, be taken around or through the 6 service lines "dead headed" on the second pair of cross arms from the top and extending easterly therefrom. In this case, the "jumper" wire was carried downward between the 2 middle of the 6 service lines, 3 of which were attached on the north, and 3 on the south side of the pole. How much clearance there was between the adjacent service wires at the point where the "jumper" wire passed through, is in some controversy.
Both the "jumper" and service wires were so insulated that there could be no electric connection between them so long as the insulation remained intact or reasonably so. But, whatever the clearance was originally, the vertical "jumper" subsequently came in contact with the longitudinal service wire next south of it, and, because of the swaying of the latter in the more or less constant but sometimes none too gentle breezes that play over the Red River valley, there was such a rubbing together of the wires, the vertical with the horizontal, that the insulation was worn through. In consequence, contact between the two sent into the Goar residence over the service wire the 2,300 volt current which so severely injured plaintiff.
Excepting only the item of clearance between the two wires, there is no claim of negligence in the construction of the transformer pole top or the complicated arrangement of wires, insulators and transformers on its numerous cross arms. The one charge of negligence against the company is that it failed to allow sufficient clearance at the point where the disastrous contact afterwards occurred. The same charge is made against the village, and it is averred in addition that it failed in its duty properly to inspect and maintain. Each defendant denies shortcoming on its own part; but is not backward in admitting negligence on the part of the other.
1. The village interposes, as a special defense, a claim that the statutory notice of the injury served upon it by plaintiff was insufficient because "it does not assume or attempt to describe the defects or acts of...
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