Reichholdt v. Union Elec. Co.

• Decision Date: 09 November 1959
• Docket Number: No. 47000,No. 1,47000,1
• Citation: 329 S.W.2d 634
• Parties: Edgar L. REICHHOLDT and Neva M. Reichholdt, Respondents, v. UNION ELECTRIC COMPANY, a Corporation, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 634

329 S.W.2d 634

Edgar L. REICHHOLDT and Neva M. Reichholdt, Respondents, v. UNION ELECTRIC COMPANY, a Corporation, Appellant.

No. 47000.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 1.

Nov. 9, 1959.

Motion for Behearing or to Transfer to Court en Banc Denied

Dec. 14, 1959.

William H. Ferrell, Keefe, Schlafly, Griesedieck & Ferrell, St. Louis, for appellant.

N. Murry Edwards, Ninian M. Edwards, St. Louis, for respondents.

HOLMAN, Commissioner.

Plaintiffs were the owners of a new residence which they had constructed upon a tract of land on Weideman Road in St. Louis County, Missouri. On May 5, 1954, that residence (and the contents) was destroyed by fire. This action was thereafter instituted by plaintiffs against Union Electric Company, Federal Pacific Electric Company, Butler Electric Company, a corporation, and Ralph Butler, doing business as Butler Electric Company, to recover damages for the loss of their home and personal property as a result of the fire. The action was dismissed as to defendants Federal Pacific and Butler Electric Company, a corporation, prior to trial, and at the close of plaintiffs' evidence the court directed a verdict for defendant Ralph Butler. The jury returned a verdict for $35,000 against the remaining defendant, Union Electric Company. Union Electric (hereinafter referred to as the defendant) has appealed from the ensuing judgment and here makes the sole contention that the evidence was legally insufficient to support the judgment and hence that the trial court erred in voerruling its motion for a directed verdict and its subsequent motion to set aside the verdict and enter judgment for said defendant.

Plaintiff's home had been constructed on a tract of land located near the home of their daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Stock. The house had been substantially completed at the time of the fire but had not yet been occupied by plaintiffs as their home. However, for several weeks prior to the fire they had been in the process of moving their furniture and personal effects into the house and most all of their belongings of that nature were in the house when it was destroyed. As will hereinafter more fully appear, the evidence indicates that the fire started from a short circuit in the electric wires at a point where the wires passed through the west garage wall of plaintiffs' house.

Plaintiffs had contracted with Ralph Butler for the installation of the electrical wiring in the house. After the work had been completed and inspected by a St. Louis County electrical inspector, the defendant began furnishing service about February 2, 1954.

Defendant maintained a 4,160-volt distribution line along Weideman Road. In order to furnish service to the plaintiffs and to the Stock home it had installed a transformer on a nearby pole which lowered the voltage for customer use from 4,160 volts to 120 and 240 volts. The transformer contained two 10-ampere fuses on the high voltage side. In preparation for receiving service plaintiffs had installed a service pole near the west wall of their (attached) garage. In furnishing service to plaintiffs, defendant ran service lines from the transformer to the top of the service pole where defendant's lines were connected with the wires Mr. Butler had installed for plaintiffs. From the point of said connection plaintiffs' wires ran down the pole, encased in a metal conduit, to a meter base which had been attached to the redwood siding which constituted the exterior garage wall. From the meter base the wires ran through the garage wall and connected with a circuit breaker installed on a section of wood paneling which had been affixed to the inside studding of the garage wall. The distance from the meter base to the circuit breaker was approximately five inches. Between those two points the wires were encased in a 1 1/2-inch thin-walled metal conduit. It was within this five-inch length of conduit that the evidence indicates the short circuit occurred which caused plaintiffs' house to be destroyed.

After the fire it was found that two of the wires leading from the transformer were burned off flush 'with the transformer secondary bushing.' According to the answers of defendant to certain interrogatories, that fact indicated that a high current was being drawn from the transformer. The transformer fuses had not blown. The damage to the transformer was such that it was replaced and thereafter 'scrapped.'

Plaintiffs presented Mr. Donald Ross, an electrical engineer, as an expert witness. A hypothetical question containing various factual assumptions was propounded to Mr. Ross and various opinions based upon those assumptions were expressed by the witness. He expressed the opinion that the instant short circuit had occurred in the wires which ran from the meter base to the circuit breaker, which wires were encased in a metal conduit; that in order to have a short circuit there must be a break or defect in the insulation surrounding the wires and either two of the wires must touch each other, or one wire must touch the metal conduit; that the defect in the insulation might have occurred in the manufacturing process, or might have been caused when the wires were pulled into the conduit; that the short circuit caused approximately 590 amperes of current to flow for about ten seconds at the place of the short which created 330 BTU's of heat resulting in a temperature at that point of more than 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit; that the temperature was more than enough to melt the metal conduit; that wood will ignite at 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit; that the instant temperature was sufficient to ignite any of the wood in plaintiffs' garage wall which might have been touching the conduit.

Mr. Ross explained that the function of a circuit breaker is to terminate the flow of electricity in the event of a short circuit or other fault on the load side, that is, the side to which the current is flowing; that the circuit breaker installed on the inside wall of plaintiffs' garage would afford protection in the event of a short circuit in any part of plaintiffs' home beyond the circuit breaker, but did not protect from the instant short circuit because it was on the opposite side of the circuit breaker.

On cross-examination the witness stated that the St. Louis County Electrical Code would not have prohibited plaintiff from placing a circuit breaker on the outside garage wall near the meter base, and if plaintiffs had done so their property would have been adequately protected against the instant short circuit; that no provision of the code required any particular standard of fusing by the distributor in order to protect the customers' lines. The witness further stated that the only device on the defendant's lines which could have terminated the flow of electricity in the event of a short circuit on plaintiffs' lines was the fuses on the transformer. However, he calculated that the 10-ampere fuses on the transformer should have withstood the 590-ampere current created by the short circuit for 200 seconds before they would have blown. As a matter of fact, however, he pointed out that the current ceased in about ten seconds because certain leads were burned off of the transformer. He expressed the opinion that 5-ampere fuses should have been used on the transformer; that 5-ampere fuses would have supplied the load into the Stock and Reichholdt houses and still would have afforded protection from short circuits which was not present when the larger 10-ampere fuses were used; that if 5-ampere fuses had been used the current, upon the occurrence of the instant short circuit, would have been stopped in .55 seconds, in which time there would not have been sufficient heat created to have ignited the wood in the garage wall; that because the fuses used were too large, the circuit serving the homes of the Stocks and plaintiffs was not reasonably safe.

Mo. Ross testified further that the minimum standards of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association require that a transformer such as the one here involved be constructed with a short circuit capacity that will carry a current of 590 amperes for 3 1/2 seconds. He also stated that there were no transformer fuses between the 10-ampere size defendant was using and the 5-ampere capacity which the witness thought should have been used. Upon cross-examination Mr. Ross stated that in fusing a transformer, continuity of service to all customers on the circuit should be considered since a fuse of lower capacity will blow sooner than one of higher capacity, thereby terminating service to all customers served by the transformer; that it should be fused so that in event of a short circuit in a customer's home the fuse of the customer would blow first, and that consideration should also be given to the fact that certain utility switching operations sometimes require a transformer to withstand from 20 to 50 times its rated...