Brocken v. Entergy Gulf States, Inc.

197 S.W.3d 429, 2006 Tex. App. LEXIS 6121, 2006 WL 1957661
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJuly 13, 2006
Docket09-04-499 CV
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 197 S.W.3d 429 (Brocken v. Entergy Gulf States, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Brocken v. Entergy Gulf States, Inc., 197 S.W.3d 429, 2006 Tex. App. LEXIS 6121, 2006 WL 1957661 (Tex. Ct. App. 2006).

Opinion

OPINION

HOLLIS HORTON, Justice.

In this personal injury case, we must decide whether the trial court properly granted the defendants’ motions for summary judgment. We affirm the summary judgment granted to Cooper Power Systems, Inc., (“Cooper”), and hold that the plaintiffs failed to produce evidence that Cooper breached any duty to provide *432 warnings or instructions regarding Cooper’s product. Plaintiffs also failed to show that Entergy Gulf States, Inc., (“En-tergy”), the owner of the electric lines, had actual knowledge of the dangerous activity conducted on its premises by North Houston Pole Line Corp., (NHP), an independent contractor. The trial court’s summary judgment granted to Entergy is also affirmed.

THE CONSTRUCTION PROJECT

On August 13, 2001, John Brocken suffered an injury during a construction project that involved moving an energized distribution line from an old pole to a new pole. John was part of a three-man crew employed by NHP. The crew also included Thomas Ferguson, the job foreman, and Clayton Demouchette. All three NHP crew members were experienced journeyman linemen.

Entergy hired NHP to install a new pole and move existing lines without interrupting Entergy’s electrical service to its customers. To execute the work, NHP provided a three-man crew, a digger truck to dig the hole for the new pole, and a bucket truck to lift two of its employees to the distribution lines to move them.

NHP’s safety manual requires its vehicles, including insulated buckets, to be grounded while near contact distance of an energized electrical circuit. NHP’s safety manual required grounding the bucket truck with a five-foot screw-type ground rod; or, with a regular half-inch ground rod; or, by connecting the ground wire from the bucket truck to the system neutral. Apparently, the NHP crew followed none of these choices, and instead attached the ground wire from the bucket truck to a copper wire on the new pole.

While the crew was moving an electric line to the new pole, a fault occurred. The electricity flowed through the new pole, to the ground wire, to the bucket truck. The electricity found a path to ground through the tires of the bucket truck.

Shortly after the fault, Demouchette suffered an electrical injury when he apparently contacted the energized bucket truck. Brocken and Ferguson, who were in the bucket approximately fifty feet in the air near the lines, lowered the bucket to the top of the cab of the truck. While being lowered in the bucket, Ferguson saw the tires on the bucket truck were on fire and noticed Demouchette lying by the front left tire of the truck. At that point, Ferguson knew that “there was electricity running through the truck.” Brocken fractured his right ankle when he jumped from the top of the bucket truck to the ground.

The summary judgment evidence included the depositions of Ferguson and Brock-en. Ferguson testified that Demouchette attached the ground wire from the bucket truck to a wire that ran the length of the new pole. Ferguson testified that he did not consider the truck properly grounded. Brocken testified that he “would have either used a ground rod or a screw ground.”

THE RECLOSER

In 1982, Entergy’s predecessor, Gulf States Utilities, purchased a “recloser,” a device that Cooper manufactured. In 1999, Entergy installed the recloser on the electric distribution line in the vicinity of this project. A recloser is “a switch or circuit breaker that establishes an electrical circuit again manually, remotely, or automatically after an interruption of service.” WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL Dictionary 1896 (2002). A recloser monitors the current, trips open at a preset threshold, and then recloses if the fault disappears. In this case, the recloser’s *433 settings allowed it to operate, or trip, if the amperage running through the recloser reached 280 amperes.

Typically the faults on electric distribution lines are caused by lightning strikes, contact with tree limbs, or short circuits across phases of the lines. When a reclo-ser opens, it de-energizes the line; and, although the setting can be adjusted, a recloser typically stays open about two seconds before reclosing. Thus, reclosers allow utilities to restore electric power quickly by temporarily interrupting a line’s electric current in response to occurrences that would otherwise interfere with the utility’s distribution of electricity to customers.

Cooper supplied Entergy with information regarding the amount of current and amperage required to trip Cooper’s reclo-sers. The plate affixed to the recloser utilized here indicates that Cooper rated it for 140 amps of continuous current. According to Bobby Singletary, an Entergy witness and Entergy’s area design manager, an Entergy engineer specifies the re-closers placed on Entergy’s electric lines and understands a recloser’s basic operations. Singletary testified that Entergy understood that the minimum trip setting on Cooper’s reclosers was two times the continuous current rating. The continuous current rating on the recloser here was 140 amperes; and, it would trip at amper-ages of 280, or more.

Before beginning the transfer of the lines, Ferguson requested that Entergy place the recloser in its “one shot” mode. Entergy’s employee, James Murphy, changed the recloser to its “one-shot” mode. When placed in this mode, the recloser in this particular case would not automatically reset and would remain open after tripping in response to 280 amperes or more of current. In the open position, electricity would not flow through the lines. The recloser was approximately two miles from NHP’s work site. Immediately after the accident, Ferguson went from the work site to the recloser. As Ferguson prepared to trip the recloser manually, he saw the switch move from the closed to the open position.

The Brockens agree that Entergy placed the recloser in the “one-shot” mode prior to NHP’s moving the lines to the new pole. After the accident, Entergy tested the recloser and determined that it operated properly. The recloser did not open until the fault current reached the recloser’s trip threshold.

THE BROCKENS’ CLAIMS AGAINST COOPER

John Brocken, his wife, America, and his daughter, Olga Martinez, assert a marketing defect claim against Cooper. The Brockens claim that Cooper marketed the recloser as a safety device, but that the recloser had insufficient warnings. Specifically, the Brockens assert that electrical workers such as John believe that reclo-sers will trip when a fault occurs and, based on that belief, rely upon reclosers to de-energize a line immediately when a fault occurs.

Cooper moved for a traditional summary judgment on the Brocken’s marketing defect claims, arguing in part that it had no duty to warn John because “a manufacturer has no duty to warn of the dangers and risks associated with another’s products.” Cooper’s motion for summary judgment also asserts that “the lack of a warning was not a ‘producing cause’ of this accident.” In its brief, Cooper argues that users of reclosers are aware that reclosers do not protect against the possibility that current may exist under some circumstances when an electrical fault on a line occurs. Cooper contends that it has no duty to warn its users of information about which they are already aware.

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197 S.W.3d 429, 2006 Tex. App. LEXIS 6121, 2006 WL 1957661, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/brocken-v-entergy-gulf-states-inc-texapp-2006.