Janowicz v. Crucible Steel Co. of America
| Decision Date | 15 January 1969 |
| Citation | 433 Pa. 304,249 A.2d 773 |
| Parties | Paul JANOWICZ v. CRUCIBLE STEEL COMPANY OF AMERICA, Appellant. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Robert C. Little, James F. Manley, Louis R. Dadowski, Burns, Manley & Little, Pittsburgh, for appellant.
Allen H. Cohen, Gatz, Cohen & O'Brien, Pittsburgh, for appellee.
Before BELL, C.J., and MUSMANNO, JONES, COHEN, EAGEN, O'BRIEN and ROBERTS, JJ.
Appellee, Paul Janowicz, was a painter employed by Johnson Brothers Company, an industrial painting contractor. Johnson Brothers had contracted with Crucible Steel Company for the painting of that Company's 2300-foot long railroad-type trestle located at Crucible's plant in Midland, Pennsylvania.
Janowicz was required to work on scaffolding suspended in air and supported by cables which had been strung horizontally on each side of the trestle. On June 17, 1962, one of the steel cables was severed by its contact with an electric wire which ran vertically down one of the steel leg supports of the trestle for the purpose of supplying light to a shed. Janowicz was hurled to the ground and sustained serious personal injuries. He instituted suit against Crucible and after trial, the jury returned a verdict in his favor and against Crucible.
Crucible's motions for judgment n.o.v. and for new trial were refused and judgment was entered on the verdict. This appeal followed.
Crucible argues that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding of negligence on its part. It reasons that the scaffolding was erected by Johnson and that its, Crucible's, inspectors had viewed the scene prior to the accident and found that the cable in question had been tied back to prevent its coming in contact with the electric line. It contends that it had no reason to believe that the tie-back arrangement would change and no reason to guard against such a change. Furthermore, Crucible submits, the removal of the tie- back was the operative fact which permitted the contact between the cable and the wire and there was no evidence of who or what caused the removal or when it occurred. This argument of Crucible, however, is based on the erroneous assumption that Crucible is only guilty of negligence if it knew or should have known that the cable had become untied or was permitted to come into contact with the wire and failed to do something about it. This assumption, however, begs the real question: What was required of Crucible in the performance of its admitted duty to appellee as a business invitee? The duty owed to appellee as a business invitee was to exercise reasonable care to make its premises safe for him or to give him adequate warning of any dangers known to it and unknown to him. Mathis v. Lukens Steel Company, 415 Pa. 262, 203 A.2d 482 (1964).
The undisputed evidence was that the cable could not have been severed by the wire if Crucible had taken any one of the basic precautions such as fusing, metal conduit, relocating the wire to the inside (instead of the outside) of the steel leg, or having the wire temporarily disconnected during the painting job. Crucible's chief safety supervisor admitted that its installation and maintenance of the wire in question did not meet the safety requirements established by both industrial practice and by the National Electrical Code, by which Code Crucible admittedly governed its operations. The Code required the wire to be fused separately and placed in a metal conduit for protection. Instead the wire in question had a fabric insulation. Crucible's electrical foreman admitted that the purpose of the metal conduit was to protect the wire from having its insulation worn off by rubbing and that if a metal conduit had been used on the wire in question, the accident would not have happened. Crucible's electrical expert testified to the same effect, to-wit: that the metal conduit would have positively prohibited the electricity from arcing to the cable. The wire in question had been tapped in by Crucible to the main electically operated trestle which was controlled by a 1600 ampere circuit breaker. Appellee's electrical expert testified that the National Electric Code which appellant admittedly followed required the wire not only to be fused separately but to be protected by a maximum fusing of 50 amperes. He testified that if there had been a 50 ampere or less fuse protection for this wire the steel cable could not have been severed when it came into contact with the bare part of the wire since when the electrical arc or fault developed, the 50 ampere fuse would have blown and thus the electrical current running into the wire would have been shut off. Because there was no fuse protection for the wire and...
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