Kentucky Utilities Co. v. Sutton's Administrator

• Decision Date: 06 March 1931
• Citation: 237 Ky. 772
• Parties: Kentucky Utilities Company v. Sutton's Administrator.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky

Page 772

237 Ky. 772

Kentucky Utilities Company v. Sutton's Administrator.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

Decided March 6, 1931.

1. Electricity. — Evidence required conclusion death of student, while replacing bulb in school gymnasium, was not caused by excessive voltage.

2. Electricity. — Electric company has no duty to inspect consumer's interior wiring system, where company has not constant right of access for inspection.

3. Electricity. — Electric company, having no duty to inspect, is not liable for defect in consumer's wiring system, unless knowing of defect, it continues to send current.

4. Electricity. — Electric company was not bound to inspect wiring system not adopted by company, nor liable for defects in system and fixtures of school, unless knowing of defects, and continuing to send current.

5. Electricity. — Large light bills during winter held not notice to electric company of defect in wiring or fixtures of school.

While administrator of killed person showed that light bills during November, December, January, and February were increasingly high, it was further shown that bills for December, January, and February of prior year were of about same amount as those of year of accident, whereas bills for months preceding and succeeding those months of year preceding accident were about as small as months preceding and succeeding high months of accident. Hence high light bills during winter months could be explained by fact that gloomy and dark months of winter were months when gymnasium was much in use at night for basket ball exhibitions.

6. Electricity. — Electric company did not, by connecting outside wire with ground installed by school board, adopt interior wiring system of school so as to incur liability for defective socket.

It appearing that ground was just inside building, and that, by connecting with it so as to ground neutral wire on three-phase system carrying current from transformer on pole in street to panel board in building, electric company did not affect condition of wiring system elsewhere in building, and that, so far as record showed, such ground, its construction and maintenance, had no connection with accident resulting from defect in light socket, it could not be said that company had adopted whole interior wiring system of high school.

7. Electricity. — It appearing conclusively death of student attempting to place light in socket was not caused by excessive voltage,

but by defective socket, over which electric company had no control, res ipsa loquitur doctrine had no application.

8. Negligence. — "Res ipsa loquitur" doctrine does not apply, where defendant did not have control or management of thing causing injury.

Appeal from Whitley Circuit Court.

GORDON & LAURENT and TYE, SILER, GILLIS & SILER for appellant.

B.B. SNYDER, J.B. SNYDER, CHARLES UPTON and JAMES M. GILBERT for appellee.

OPINION OF THE COURT BY JUDGE DIETZMAN.

Reversing.

The Williamsburg High School was built by the school authorities in the year 1927; the electric wiring in the building being installed by C.L. Hagaman of Harlan, Ky., doing business under the name of Hagaman Electric Company, as subcontractor of the general contractor, O.T. Black. The building has a gymnasium about 90 feet long and 80 feet wide. There is a balcony on either side of this gymnasium supported by iron rods running from the front of the balcony up to steel cross-beams. There are four of these crossbeams extending from one side of the gymnasium to the other at a height of from 20 to 22 feet above the floor. On the top side of these beams are braces constructed very much like bridge work. The gymnasium is lighted by twelve droplights, three of which hang from each beam. Each light has a metal reflector. These twelve lights are divided among three electric circuits; there being four lights to each circuit. The middle row of four lights is the one involved in this suit. The three electric circuits are controlled by three switches on a plate located on the wall of the balcony. The center switch controls the middle row of lights. About 9:30 on the morning of January 18, 1929, appellee's decedent, Clarence Sutton, who had been playing basket ball in the gymnasium, and who was wet with sweat, climbed up on one of the crossbeams to replace a globe in one of the lights of the middle row which had burned out. None of the lights in the gymnasium was burning at this time. When Sutton reached the light with the burned-out globe, he sat down straddle of the beam, leaned over until his stomach and chest rested against one of the steel braces, and then reached down and got hold of the light cord and pulled it up until he got the reflector in his hands. Holding the reflector with his right hand, he unscrewed the burned-out globe with his left. He reached around to hand the globe to Clifford Freeman, a school companion who was upon the beam behind him, and, while he was in the midst of that act, he collapsed and dropped the reflector. Within two or three minutes he was dead, having been, as is conceded, electrocuted. While Sutton was holding the reflector, and just as he dropped it, the three other lights on the middle row momentarily lighted up, but went out as soon as Sutton dropped the reflector. Those lights were not burned out, and neither was a light in the basement, which was burning at this time whilst the janitor was doing some work, and which was also on the same circuit as was the middle row of lights in the gymnasium. The appellee, as the administrator of the estate of Clarence Sutton, brought this suit against the appellant, who supplied electric current to the schoolhouse, to recover for the death of his decedent.

The original petition charged that Sutton "was killed by a current of electricity which was negligently sent into said building and gymnasium by the defendant. . . and which . . . was allowed by the negligence of the defendant . . . to come in contact with the body and person of the said Clarence Sutton, whereby he was instantly killed by the same." The amended petition charged that Sutton "was killed by a current of electricity which came in contact with his body which said current of electricity was owned and maintained and operated by the defendant . . . and that the gross carelessness and negligence of the defendant . . . in the operation and maintenance of said electricity wholly caused the death of plaintiff's intestate." The answer traversed the allegations of the petition with a plea of contributory negligence, which was in turn denied, and on these issues and the evidence heard in support thereof the case went to the jury, which found a verdict in behalf of the appellee in the sum of $7,000. From the judgment entered on that verdict, this appeal is prosecuted.

Appellant by its brief expressly waives all errors relied upon in its motion and grounds for a new trial, except its claimed right to a peremptory instruction, and that question is the only one we have for determination on this appeal. There can be no escape from the dilemma that Clarence Sutton met his death either through some defect in the light socket which he was holding in his hand at the time he was killed or because of some excess of voltage of electricity sent into the building by the appellant and the effect of which the light socket was not designed to, and did not, prevent. To answer the natural inquiry as to how there was any current of electricity present at the socket when the switch on the wall of the balcony which was supposed to control the electricity to this middle row of lights was thrown, it may be said that these lights were controlled by two wires, one of which led directly to the lights from the panel board and the other of which went through the switch to the lights. The electric wire which carries the electricity is called in this record by all the witnesses "the hot wire," and the other wire which completes the circuit by returning the current to the ground, and which is the neutral wire, is called by these witnesses "the cold wire," and we shall adopt their terminology. In proper construction, the hot wire should have gone through the switch and the cold wire should have been the one which led directly to the lights, but through some error in construction the hot wire on this circuit upon which the middle row of lights was strung led directly to the lights and the cold wire went through the switch. Therefore, when the switch was thrown, although potentially the current was present at the sockets of these lights, yet, because the circuit was broken, the lights did not light up, but, when the circuit in any manner became grounded, as it was when the socket or reflector came in contact with the sweaty body of Sutton, which was prone upon the steel beam, which in turn was grounded, the circuit was completed and the current flowed.

Returning now to the possible causes of Sutton's death, and taking the second alternative first, we find that every witness in this case, those for the appellee as well as those for the appellant, testified that, if any excessive voltage had been sent in over the wires after Sutton had grounded the circuit and thus closed it, all the lights on that circuit would have burned out, and especially so would the light in the basement. For instance, C.L. Hagaman, who installed this electric work in the building, and who testified for the appellee herein, was asked this question:

"If that lamp (the cellar light) was on that same circuit . . . on which the boy was killed continued to burn . . . after the accident, would you say or not that the boy was killed from excessive voltage? A. If the light was burning at the time he was killed, no."

The expert witnesses for the appellant, including Professor W.E. Freeman of the University of Kentucky, corroborate Mr. Hagaman in this statement, and there is no evidence in the record to the contrary. Further, all of the...