Sun Oil Co. v. Kneten
| Decision Date | 07 January 1948 |
| Docket Number | No. 12014.,12014. |
| Citation | 164 F.2d 806 |
| Parties | SUN OIL CO. v. KNETEN et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
S. R. Greer and R. D. Cox, Jr., both of McAllen, Tex., for appellant.
James L. Lattimore and Joe Alsup, both of Corpus Christi, Tex., for appellees.
Before HUTCHESON, WALLER, and LEE, Circuit Judges.
Fred Henry Kneten, son of the plaintiffs, Caroline and Henry Kneten, was scalded to death by steam injected into a boiler inside of which he was working, as an employee and member of the crew of Jeff J. Allen, a boiler maker, who had made a contract with appellant to clean, repair, and generally overhaul a battery of three boilers belonging to appellant.
Appellant, on the date of the accident, was operating a drilling rig, the power for which was furnished by a battery of three gas-heated steam boilers numbered 33, 35, and 34, and placed in the order of those numbers in reference to each other. These three boilers were operated as a unit, with fuel, water, steam header, and blowdown exhaust pipes interconnected. Each boiler, however, was equipped with separate valves on these pipes so as to make possible the separate operation and control of each pipe that ran into each boiler.
On the morning of the accident the independent contractor, Allen, and his crew arrived at appellant's premises about 7 o'clock and began work on Boiler No. 33, after having on the previous day completed the work of cleaning and repairing Boiler No. 35. At the close of the work on the day before, employees of the defendant, in accordance with instructions from Allen, cooled Boiler No. 33 during the night, drained all steam and water, removed the gas burners, closed its valves, and had it ready for the independent contractor and his crew when they arrived. In this condition the boiler was turned over to Allen, but Boilers 34 and 35 were kept in operation by defendant. All this was after the manner in which Allen had done the same work on Boiler No. 35 on the preceding day.
The fireman of the defendant in charge of the boilers was J. C. Copeland. When he came on the job that morning he made a check of all the valves on Boiler 33 and found that they were closed. He cautioned Allen and his employees, including the deceased, against opening any of the valves on Boiler 33 and explained the imperative necessity of keeping them closed. All supervision and control over the boilers and the repair work was turned over to Allen.
At about 2:30 P.M. the fireman opened the blowdown valve on Boiler No. 35 in order to permit the excess steam, water, and sediment in Boiler 35 to escape through the exhaust manifold into a brush area some distance away. During the day this operation had been repeated several times by Copeland without harmful results, but when the blowdown valve on Boiler 35 was opened at 2:30 the exhaust valve on Boiler 33 had in the meantime, in some manner unknown to anyone, been opened, whereby live steam and hot water passed into Boiler 33, scalding and burning Kneten so severely that he subsequently died.
Allen, the independent contractor, and as employer of deceased, carried Workmen's Compensation Insurance with the Traders and General Insurance Company, which company, after the death of Kneten, paid compensation to his parents in the sum of $5921.51. Thereafter the Insurance Company joined the parents of the deceased as plaintiffs in this suit against defendant as an allegedly negligent third party.
Twenty special issues were submitted to the jury and upon answers thereto the Court rendered a judgment, in favor of the Insurance Company, for the amount which it had paid out, and in favor of the mother of the deceased for the sum of $7328.49.
Two events occurred, without the happening of both of which the deceased would not have been injured, viz.: (1) The exhaust valve had been opened on Boiler 33 in which Kneten was working; (2) live steam from Boiler Number 35, which burned the deceased, passed into Boiler No. 33 through that open valve.
It is without dispute: (1) That the exhaust valve on Boiler 33 was closed when that boiler was turned over by the defendant to the independent contractor preparatory to the work being done by the latter; (2) that the valve was not opened by any employee of the defendant; (3) that there is no evidence that the defendant's fireman of the two boilers then in operation knew that the valve on Boiler 33 was open or that it had been opened since work thereon had been started by Allen; (4) that the defendant's fireman had on two or three occasions during that same day, after such work on Boiler 33 had been in progress for some time, opened up the "blowdown valve" actuating Boiler 35 for the purpose of reducing the water and sediment therein through the release of steam with no injury resulting as long as the valve on No. 33 had been kept closed, but that at 2:30 P.M. when the fireman again opened the "blowdown valve" on Boiler 35, the valve on Boiler 33 had been opened without the knowledge, and through no fault, of the defendant; (5) that had that valve not been opened, the accident would not have happened; (6) that there was no evidence that the valve was defective; (7) that the appellant neither had the right to exercise, nor did it exercise, any supervision or control over any of the employees of the independent contractor as to the manner in which they did their work.
The independent contractor, in the performance of his contract in cleaning the boilers, used an air hose, and all parties seem to think that the exhaust valve on No. 33 was likely opened by the...
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