Reighard v. Georgia Power Co.
| Decision Date | 09 April 1969 |
| Docket Number | No. 44316,No. 1,44316,1 |
| Citation | 119 Ga.App. 640,168 S.E.2d 639 |
| Parties | Ernest F. REIGHARD v. GEORGIA POWER COMPANY |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Syllabus by the Court
The court erred in granting a summary judgment for the defendant.
This is an action for damages for personal injuries sustained in contacting one of the defendant power company's high voltage, electrical wires, resulting from the defendant's alleged negligence. The complaint, as finally redrafted and amended, alleged substantially as follows: The plaintiff was employed by a company engaged in loading gravel from a rock quarry on trucks for stockpiling. Unknown to the plaintiff, more than three months prior to his injury the defendant had strung four uninsulated electric wires 24 to 26 feet from the ground between two poles on the work site. The bottom three wires carried 26,500 volts phased to ground and the top wire was neutral. The plaintiff was on the end of the 23-foot boom of a diesel shovel which was raised so that he was between 26 and 28 feet above the ground. As the shovel operator attempted to drive under the wires, the plaintiff's arms, hands and chest made physical contact with the lowermost wire, inflicting on him an electric shock with alleged serious and permanent injuries. The plaintiff did not know that said wires were uninsulated and carried a dangerous amount of electricity and in the exercise of ordinary care could not have discovered this or avoided the shock. Approximately 150 feet from said wires, the defendant had installed another power line approximately the same distance from the ground, which the plaintiff and the shovel driver knew to be insulated. Due to the height of the shovel booms, it was necessary and customary for some employees to ride atop the boom to raise the insulated wires over the boom, which custom was known to the defendant. The defendant's alleged negligence consisted of maintaining uninsulated, live, high voltage electrical wires at the height of only 24-26 feet above the ground, with a live wire on the bottom, rather than the top, and an insulated set of wires in the vicinity, and in not giving any warning notice or turning off the electricity or raising the wire to a minimum height of 40 feet, defendant having been on notice for more than 3 months that said place was a gravel loading site where diesels with long and high booms and workmen would operate.
The defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, supported by a deposition of the plaintiff and six affidavits. In opposition to the motion, the plaintiff filed one affidavit. The showing tending to suport the motion was as follows: The plaintiff deposed that he had been with that same shovel while it had gone back and forth underneath both sets of wires once or twice prior to his injury and, although he had lifted up two of the three wires situated on the upper part of the hill each time the shovel passed underneath them, he had never previously found it necessary to lift up any of the wires situated on the lower part of the hill (from which he received the shock); that he did not recall having ever seen anyone lifting the wire which shocked him; that the only person he remembered seeing lifting the uphill set of wires was the oiler before him, who used a forked stick even on those wires, which were insulated with a rubber coating; that, when he lifted the wires on the upper part of the hill, his procedure was to walk up to the wires, stop, climb up the boom and lift them across and over the boom, but on the occasion of his injury on the downhill set of wires, he climbed up the boom before it had reached the wires and stopped, for some reason which he could not remember.
Rufus Lee Copeland, a construction worker who witnessed the injury from a distance of 150 feet, deposed that he saw the plaintiff standing up near the end of the boom as it was moving up an incline toward the electric wire that he contacted, with about half of his body above the end of the boom; that the plaintiff did not reach out or extend his arms as though he was going to touch or lift the wire that he contacted; that the boom itself was low enough to pass under the wire; that, as the plaintiff's chest contacted the bottom wire, he saw a ball of fire and the plaintiff fell to the ground; that he had no idea why the plaintiff was standing up on the boom as it moved toward the electric wires.
Odell Clampitt, the driver of the shovel on which the plaintiff was injured, deposed that he had driven his shovel under the set of wires on which the plaintiff was injured 10 or 15 times and had never had to lower his boom to do so; that the plaintiff had been with him on a number of these occasions; that his brother, Warren, who operated another shovel, always operated his boom about 3 or 4 feet higher than he did; that Warren was about 75 feet ahead of his shovel and had lowered his boom to go under the wires in question; that, as the deponent started to go toward the same wires, he saw the plaintiff climb about halfway up his boom and he warned him not to go any further up because of the danger of falling due to the jerky vibrating movement of the shovel and the danger of the electric wires; that 'we' had just finished talking about the danger of the wires and it just did not enter his mind that he would go on up the boom; that about that time, his shovel veered slightly into a ditch and, while concentrating on the road, he did not know the plaintiff had climbed on up the boom; that he did not see the plaintiff again until after the shock occurred and his position at that time indicated that his feet had been about two feet from the end of the boom; that, about an hour later, he 'walked' his shovel under these...
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...Power Co., 231 Ga. 456, 457, 202 S.E.2d 55, 56, supra. The Supreme Court specifically disapproved the holding in Reighard v. Georgia Power Co., 119 Ga.App. 640, 168 S.E.2d 639 insofar as it was contrary to its decision. The facts in the present case, even though they involve an individual n......
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