Wilson v. S. Cal. Edison Co.
| Decision Date | 09 February 2015 |
| Docket Number | B249714 |
| Citation | 184 Cal.Rptr.3d 26,234 Cal.App.4th 123 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Simona WILSON, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON COMPANY, Defendant and Appellant. |
Southern California Edison Company, Patricia A. Cirucci, Brian A. Cardoza, Carla M. Blanc, Rosemead; Lim, Ruger & Kim, Christopher Kim, Sandra Sakamoto, Arnold Barba, Julie Kwun, Los Angeles; Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland, Timothy T. Coates, Meehan Rasch and Robin Meadow, Los Angeles, for Defendant and Appellant.
Grassini, Wrinkle & Johnson and Roland Wrinkle, Woodland Hills, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Defendant Southern California Edison Company (Edison) appeals from a judgment following a jury trial in which the jury found in favor of plaintiff Simona Wilson on her claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), negligence, and nuisance, and awarded her $1,050,000 in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages. All of her claims are based upon her allegation that Edison failed to properly supervise, secure, operate, maintain, or control the electrical substation next door to plaintiff's house (the Topaz substation), allowing uncontrolled stray electrical currents to enter the home. Stray current (or stray voltage) is the unavoidable byproduct of grounding an electrical system.
The gas company found stray voltage on Wilson's gas meter the year after she moved into the house, and again two years later. Edison paid for certain measures taken by the gas company, which virtually eliminated the voltage on the meter. After Wilson remodeled her master bathroom (four years after she moved into the house), she began to feel low levels of electricity in her shower because the shower had metal pipes and the drain was connected to the ground, which allowed the stray electricity to flow when someone touched the shower while in contact with the drain. Edison offered to replace all or a portion of the metal pipes with plastic, which would eliminate the voltage in her shower, but Wilson refused the offer and insisted that Edison eliminate all stray voltage on her property. She subsequently filed the instant lawsuit.
Edison contends that Wilson's claims fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Public Utilities Commission (the commission or PUC), that no substantial evidence supports her claims, that the damages award is excessive, and that punitive damages were unjustified. We conclude that the PUC has not exercised its authority to adopt a policy regarding the issues in this lawsuit, and therefore it does not have exclusive jurisdiction over Wilson's claims. But we also conclude that Wilson failed to present sufficient evidence to support her IIED and negligence claims, or to support an award of punitive damages. Finally, we conclude the verdict on the nuisance claim cannot stand because the trial court refused to give Edison's proffered instruction regarding causation of Wilson's physical symptoms, and therefore the jury relied upon irrelevant evidence when determining that claim. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment, order judgment entered in favor of Edison on the IIED and negligence claims, and remand to the trial court for a retrial on the nuisance claim.
Analysis of the facts and issues in this case requires a basic understanding of electricity and electrical distribution systems.
Electricity is produced at a generating plant. Because it is not economical to send electricity over long distances at low voltages, the electricity produced at the plant is stepped up through transformers to a very high voltage before it is sent out over transmission lines. A substation, such as Edison's Topaz substation at issue in this case, receives the high voltage electricity from the generating plant and steps it down through transformers to 4,000 volts. It then sends the electricity over distribution lines out to the neighborhood power poles, where an additional transformer steps down the voltage to 240/120 volts before delivering the electricity to homes or businesses.
In order for electricity to flow, there must be a complete circuit. In other words, when electricity is sent out from a transformer to a “load” (i.e., something that is using electricity, such as a light or appliance), it must have a return path. Typically, electricity is sent over one conductor (wire), called the “hot,” and returns on another conductor called the neutral. The flow of electricity is referred to as “current” and is measured in amperes (or amps); voltage is the pressure that drives the current. The amount of current depends in part upon the amount of resistance in the circuit; e.g., a 100–watt lightbulb has less resistance than a 60–watt lightbulb, so there will be a larger current flowing through it (and therefore the bulb burns brighter).1
For safety reasons, electrical systems usually are grounded. That means that at various points in the system, including at the substation, a connection is made from the neutral to the ground, i.e., the earth. Because the earth is conductive, it can provide a return path for the flow of electricity. Therefore, if, for example, an energized wire fell to the ground from the distribution lines, the earth would provide a path for the current to return to the substation, where a protective device would break the circuit. But the conductivity of the earth also can present a danger to someone who touches a source of electricity. If that person is in physical contact with the earth, electricity will flow from the electrical source, through his or her body, to the earth and on to the distribution system or substation, thus completing the circuit. The amount of current will depend on the resistance of the person's body, the amount of contact area, and the amount of voltage present.
In a grounded electrical system, there will always be some current flowing back to the substation through the earth. This is referred to as neutral-to-earth voltage, or “NEV,” and it cannot be entirely eliminated. NEV is one cause of “stray voltage,” which is voltage of 10 volts or less appearing on objects that are not part of an electrical system, that can be simultaneously contacted by members of the general public.2 Metal objects, such as water pipes or gas lines, that are buried in or connected to the earth will conduct electricity, so if a person in a home touched a water pipe that was energized due to NEV while also touching the earth or another conductor at a different voltage, a circuit would be completed and current would run through that person's body. This “touch potential” can be eliminated by replacing metal pipes with plastic pipes or installing isolators (such as a short section of plastic pipe) to stop the flow of electricity onto metal fixtures, or by connecting (or “bonding”) the two conductors to equalize the voltage between the two.
The physiological effects of current flowing through a person's body depends upon the amount of the current. According to a leading reference, a woman who encounters a current of 0.3 milliamps (mA) would not feel anything. At 0.7mA, she would feel a slight tingling; that typically is the perception threshold. At 1.2mA, she would feel a shock, but it would not be painful and muscular control would not be lost. She would feel a painful shock at 6mA, but she would still have muscular control. The let-go threshold is at 10.5mA, and at 15mA, she would feel a severe shock, have muscular contractions, and her breathing could be difficult.3 Administration of currents on patients often is used by physicians to determine whether they have nerve damage; they typically administer currents of 20 to 50mA, and can administer up to 120mA.4
The house at issue in this case is located at 904 Knob Hill Drive in Redondo Beach, next door to Edison's Topaz substation. Edison owned the house until 1999.
In 1995, Edison rented the house to the Pantucci family. Before renting the house to the Pantuccis, a corporate real estate agent from Edison asked Edison's facilities manager to take a look at the electrical system because a previous tenant had complained that she got a shock in the kitchen from the sink or refrigerator.
Edison hired an electrical contractor, Precision Electric, to go through the electrical panels and the house to make sure everything was in order. Precision Electric took voltage readings by the sink to the ground, and found no voltage. The contractor replaced a ground clamp and went through the entire house, but did not find any electrical problems. The contractor was called back to the house after another Edison agent touched the dishwasher door while standing in water (the dishwasher had leaked) and felt a shock. When Precision Electric checked the dishwasher, the water was gone, and there was no voltage between the dishwasher and a tack strip on the floor. The contractor told Edison the shock could have been caused by the power feed to the dishwasher being in water when the dishwasher leaked.
Soon after the Pantuccis moved into the house, they began to experience shocks in the bathtub, at the washing machine, in a kiddie pool in the backyard, and at other places around the house. The shocks were mild, and no one was hurt. The Pantuccis complained to Edison a couple of times, and Edison sent people several times to try to fix the problem, but it never got fixed.
In April 1997, Edison's lease administrator, Tina Drebushenko (now Van Breukelen) e-mailed several Edison employees regarding some calls she recently received from Ms. Pantucci about shocks she received when touching faucets. Ms. Pantucci also told her that the family no longer used the bathtub. Drebushenko reported that “[t]his problem was supposed to have been corrected some time ago, but the tenants report that it never really was ... they just put up with it...
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