McDonald v. Shell Oil Co.

• Decision Date: 01 July 1955
• Citation: McDonald v. Shell Oil Co., 44 Cal.2d 785, 285 P.2d 902 (Cal. 1955)
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: Andrew V. McDONALD, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. SHELL OIL COMPANY, Incorporated, a corporation, Charles E. Neuhaus, et al., Defendants and Respondents. L. A. 23543.

Page 902

285 P.2d 902

44 Cal.2d 785

Andrew V. McDONALD, Plaintiff and Appellant, v.SHELL OIL COMPANY, Incorporated, a corporation, Charles E. Neuhaus, et al., Defendants and Respondents.

L. A. 23543.

Supreme Court of California, In Bank.

July 1, 1955.

James C. Hollingsworth, Edward Henderson and Margaret Keller, Ventura, for appellant.

Bauder, Gilbert, Thompson & Kelly, Bauder, Gilbert, Thompson, Kelly & Veatch, Los Angeles, Churchill & Teague, E. Perry Churchill, Ventura, and W. I. Gilbert, Los Angeles, for respondents.

SPENCE, Justice.

Plaintiff appeals from a judgment of nonsuit granted at his third trial, the two previous trials having resulted in jury verdicts for plaintiff followed by the granting of motions for new trial.Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff and disregarding conflicts in accordance with the settled rules applicable in testing the propriety of nonsuits, Huffman v. Lindquist, 37 Cal.2d 465, 468, 234 P.2d 34, 29 A.L.R.2d 485;Palmquist v. Mercer, 43 Cal.2d 92, 95, 272 P.2d 26, it nevertheless appears that the law precludes plaintiff from recovering damages from defendantsShell Oil Company and Neuhaus.

Plaintiff was an employee of Owens, an independent contractor engaged by defendant Shell to recover certain casing and to abandon an oil well located upon a Shell lease near Ventura.Plaintiff was injured while working, with three other employees of Owens, on a well-pulling rig owned by Owens.The rig and the four-man crew were furnished by Owens pursuant to his contract with Shell.The rig had a cathead, which is a revolving spool, and a catline, which is a piece of manila rope about an inch and a half thick.The catline had a hook on one end, and the other end was wrapped around the cathead.The cathead and catline were used to pick up equipment and pipe joints, and lay them down around the rig.The cathead had no safety clamp or lock to stop the lowering or raising operation and leave a weight on the catline.Such safety clamp will keep the catline in place so that the revolving cathead need not hold the weight.If the revolving cathead has no safety clamp, the catline is likely to burn as a result of the friction, and the object attached to the catline will fall.That is what happened here.Steel elevators weighing approximately 1,200 pounds were suspended on the catline about 24 to 30 feet in the air at the top of the drill pipe.No one was stationed at the controls of the cathead.The friction of the revolving cathead, which was worn and grooved, caused the catline to burn and break, so that the suspended elevators fell on plaintiff, resulting in his serious injury.This procedure was contrary to that customarily followed by Owens' employees and constituted a dangerous and unusual practice.It was adopted at the time in question under the order of Owens' driller, who was in charge of the crew's work.While under its contract with Owens, Shell had the right to have a foreman on the job at all times, neither its general production foreman, defendant Neuhaus, nor any other of its employees was present when the accident happened.

Shortly prior to the accident Owens' employees had obtained from Shell's warehouse a new rope, which was installed as a catline on the rig.There was no provision in the contract indicating that Shell should provide such items for Owens' use on the job, and it was simply borrowed for the time as other pieces of equipment had been borrowed on previous occasions.Plaintiff makes no claim that this new rope or catline was in any way defective or contributed to the cause of the accident.But plaintiff does contend that Shell and its agent Neuhaus had and exercised control over the operations of Owens and knew, or should have known, of the absence of the safety clamp, and the worn and grooved condition of the cathead.On the other hand, defendants maintain that they did not actively interfere with or direct Owens in his independent operations, that they had no duty to provide safe equipment or appliances for the use of plaintiff, who was the employee of Owens, the independent contractor, and that the sole proximate cause of plaintiff's injuries was the negligence of Owens and Owens' employees.

An independent contractor is one who renders service in the course of an independent employment or occupation, following his employer's desires only as to the results of the work, and not as to the means whereby it is to be accomplished.Moody v. Industrial Acc. Comm., 204 Cal. 668, 670, 269 P. 542, 60 A.L.R. 299;S. A. Gerrard Co. v. Industrial Acc. Comm., 17 Cal.2d 411 413, 110 P.2d 377.The general supervisory right to control the work so as to insure its satisfactory completion in accordance with the terms of the contract does not make the hirer of the independent contractor liable for the latter's negligent acts in performing the details of the work.Green v. Soule, 145 Cal. 96, 99-100, 78 P. 337.An owner is not liable for injuries resulting from defective appliances unless he has supplied them or has the privilege of selecting them or the materials out of which they are made, Hard v. Hollywood Turf Club, 112 Cal.App.2d 263, 274-275, 246 P.2d 716, or unless he exercised active control over the men employed or the operations of the equipment used by the independent contractor.Willis v. San Bernardino Lbr. & Box Co., 82 Cal.App. 751, 756, 256 P. 224.

Under the terms of his independent contract, Owens was obligated to furnish the well-pulling rig equipment and he did furnish it; the work which was being performed at the time of the accident was the very work which Owens was required to perform under his contract; no severable portion of the work over which Shell had retained control was being performed; there were no Shell employees or foremen present at the time of the accident, and they had no knowledge that the equipment was being used in such unusual and dangerous manner as it was when plaintiff was injured; and Shell at no time, under the evidence, affirmatively assumed control, interfered with or actively directed any details of the work being performed by Owens' crew.

Plaintiff argues that Shell retained control over the methods and manner of performance of the work by Owens' crew because defendant Neuhaus, its general production foreman, testified that he was in charge of the abandonment of the oil well in question and had the equipment under his observation; that Shell always had a working production foreman on the job, though he never gave any 'orders or directions to any man on the job' but dealt directly with Owens' foreman; that the Shell foreman and Owens received the same work sheets; that Shell had authority under its contract to stop Owens if it considered the work unsatisfactory in any respect; that after the accident Shell conducted an investigation and its committee recommended the use of a catline clamp to replace riding the rope on the cathead, which safety device was thereafter installed by Owens' employees.Plaintiff further cites this provision in the...