Ostrowski v. Crawford Door Sales Co. of Scranton, Pa.

Decision Date24 March 1966
Citation217 A.2d 758,207 Pa.Super. 424
PartiesOSTROWSKI v. CRAWFORD DOOR SALES CO. OF SCRANTON, PA., d/b/a etc., et al. (two cases). Appeal of CRAWFORD DOOR SALES CO. OF SCRANTON, Original Defendant. Appeal of Edward J. Lebertoski, Additional Defendant.
CourtPennsylvania Superior Court

Page 758

217 A.2d 758
207 Pa.Super. 424
OSTROWSKI

v.
CRAWFORD DOOR SALES CO. OF SCRANTON, PA., d/b/a etc., et al.
(two cases).
Appeal of CRAWFORD DOOR SALES CO. OF SCRANTON, Original Defendant.
Appeal of Edward J. Lebertoski, Additional Defendant.
Superior Court of Pennsylvania.
March 24, 1966.

[207 Pa.Super. 426]

Page 760

Irving L. Epstein, Scranton, for Crawford Door Sales Co.

Harry P. O'Neill, Jr., Walsh & O'Neill, Scranton, for Edward J. Libertoski.

William T. Malone, Scranton, for appellee.

Before ERVIN, P. J., and WRIGHT, WATKINS, MONTGOMERY, JACOBS, and HOFFMAN, JJ.

JACOBS, Judge.

On January 29, 1963, the plaintiff, an employee of the Scranton Casket Company, was injured by a descending overhead door on his employer's premises. He brought an action in trespass against Crawford Door Sales Company of Scranton (Crawford), alleging that Crawford was negligent in installing the door and that as a result of this negligence, the door collapsed, causing plaintiff's injuries. Crawford joined Edward J. Libertoski as an additional defendant, alleging that Libertoski was an independent contractor who installed the door furnished by Crawford and that Libertoski was responsible for any injuries. Libertoski joined Scranton Casket Company (Casket), alleging that this [207 Pa.Super. 427] work was satisfactory to Casket, was accepted by Casket, and that the premises were in the exclusive possession of Casket at the time of the accident so that any responsibility for a dangerous condition was Casket's.

The case was tried in September, 1964, before President Judge HOBAN and a jury. The jury made special findings of negligence and causation as to each one of the defendants and found all three jointly and severally liable, awarding a verdict of $10,000. Crawford and Libertoski filed motions for judgment n. o. v., which were denied by the lower court. They appeal from the judgment entered on the verdict.

The following facts were established at trial: Crawford had a contract with Casket to provide an overhead door completely installed at the entrance to Casket's new factory extension. Crawford supplied the door in sections and the necessary hardware. Libertoski and his workmen picked up this material and installed the door for a fee to be paid by Crawford, as had been their usual business practice for about seventeen years. Libertoski paid his own workmen.

The door in question was a verticle lift, five-section, overhead door, ten feet wide and nine feet high which had been installed about one week before the accident. It weighed between 200 and 230 pounds and was used for ingress and egress by trucks and employees. Unlike the usual garage door which lifts to a certain extent and then folds back so that a section becomes parallel with the ceiling, this door went straight up along side the upper wall of the factory structure. Operating on guide rails or tracks on either side of the doorway, the door was held by cables attached to the lower section of the door which led to tension springs affixed to the structure. The

Page 761

door was supposed to move easily in either direction when comparatively slight pressure was applied. When the door was installed, the floor of the company's factory addition had [207 Pa.Super. 428] not been completed. To allow for the proposed concrete floor, a door stop had to be provided about either inches above the ground level. Cleats, wooden two by fours or sixes, six inches in height, were nailed to the door frame and a section of angle iron (1 1/4"" X 1 1/4"" X 1/8"'') was bolted through the guide rails to the door frame to provide a stop for the descending door at the eight-inch mark.

In addition to the unfinished floor in the building, the overhead construction was also incomplete when the door was installed so that snow or water found its way into the factory addition where the roof of the addition adjoined its wall. The water descended the side of the wall above the door frame and onto the door. Since there was no heat at the time in the addition and temperatures were very low that month, the water froze and ice accumulated on the exterior and interior of the door surface.

Although the door worked satisfactorily the day it was installed, according to Libertoski, a Casket employee testified that it 'never worked like it should' and 'was always hard to control.' On the day before the accident a Casket foreman, investigating a complaint about it, tried the door and found that it was hard to push up and 'if I didn't hold it, it would have fell down.' Casket's Secretary-Treasurer testified that an employee complained to him about the door on January 28, 1963, but that he didn't look at the door and he didn't remember whether he called Crawford or did anything about it.

On January 29, 1963, plaintiff intended to go outside during his lunch hour. A coworker, who noticed that the door was hard to raise, preceded him by some distance and was too far in advance for plaintiff to ask him to hold the door for plaintiff. Plaintiff 'reached for the door, and when I did, I just heard like [207 Pa.Super. 429] a rifle shot, and that's all I remembered.' When he recovered consciousness, plaintiff's arm was caught between a section of the door that had left the track, bending upward and inward, and the remainder of the door. Plaintiff was severely injured and no question is raised concerning the amount of the verdict.

Both Crawford and Libertoski, in requesting this court to enter judgment n. o. v., contend that there...

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