Contractors of Engineering & Manufacturing of Oklahoma, Inc. v. Williams Automatic Sprinkler Co.

1974 OK 115, 527 P.2d 325, 1974 Okla. LEXIS 411
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedOctober 8, 1974
DocketNo. 46475
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 1974 OK 115 (Contractors of Engineering & Manufacturing of Oklahoma, Inc. v. Williams Automatic Sprinkler Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Contractors of Engineering & Manufacturing of Oklahoma, Inc. v. Williams Automatic Sprinkler Co., 1974 OK 115, 527 P.2d 325, 1974 Okla. LEXIS 411 (Okla. 1974).

Opinion

BARNES, Judge:

In December, 1967, one Harms, apparently as the owner of Oklahoma City’s Lincoln Lanes Building, entered into a contract to provide this building with fire protection by the installation in it of a sprinkler system to be installed by the Ap-pellee, usually hereinafter referred to as “defendant”.

After the installation had been completed and accepted by the building owner in February, 1968, freezing weather subsequently occurred in December of that year and some of the sprinkler system’s pipes in the building’s attic froze and broke open, allowing the building’s interior beneath to be flooded with water which damaged and/or destroyed various items of personal property therein belonging to Appellant, a lessee and occupant of the building.

When Appellant, hereinafter referred to as “plaintiff”, thereafter instituted this action, seeking recovery of its losses, against Appellee and other defendants, Appellee filed an answer denying it had breached any duty it owned plaintiff after the building owner’s acceptance of the installation job. Thereafter, when this answering defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, attaching thereto an exhibit showing that in the specifications for the job there had been included a provision that the building owner “is to provide sufficient heat in attic space to prevent piping from freezing . . . ”, the trial court sustained said motion and entered summary judgment for defendant, noting therein that plaintiff had “offered no response to the evidence attached to defendant’s motion.

Thereafter, plaintiff lodged the present appeal from said judgment, and, in an [unpublished] opinion, the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case upon application to it of the first paragraph of the syllabus in Schlender v. Andy Jansen Co., Okl., 380 P.2d 523. We have concluded that said Court erred and that defendant’s petition for certiorari should be granted.

[327]*327The proposition the Court of Appeals relied upon, as enunciated in Schlender, supra, is as follows:

“1. Generally, as a matter of public policy, a builder’s liability to third persons for negligent construction is terminated upon acceptance by the contractee, but where the contractor has wilfully created a condition which he knows, or by the exercise of ordinary diligence should have known, to be immediately and certainly dangerous to persons other than the contractee, who will necessarily be exposed to such danger, considerations of public policy do not require the application of the general rule.”

At the outset, we have no hesitancy in concluding that the exception to the general rule referred to in Schlender, supra, has no application to the uncontrovert-ed facts of the present case because of the above mentioned exhibit attached to defendant’s summary judgment motion, which, as we have seen, the trial court noted was not denied by plaintiff. As will be perceived from that exhibit, according to the plans and specifications for installation of the sprinkler system, the building’s owner was to guard against the eventuality involved here by providing sufficient heat in the attic space to prevent the pipes there from freezing. Therefore, in accord with the well-established principle recognized in Leininger v. Stearns-Roger Manufacturing Co., 17 Utah 2d 37, 404 P.2d 33, 36, that “each case must be decided on the basis of its own facts . . . ”, we think the rule applicable here is [as very generally stated there] as follows:

“ . . . the contractor is not liable if he has merely carried out the plans, specifications and directions given him, since in that case the responsibility is assumed by the employer, at least when the plans are not so obviously dangerous that no reasonable man would follow them.” [Identical with a portion of the Annotator’s Comment at 58 A.L.R.2d 893, on the case of Russell v. Arthur Whitcomb, Inc., 100 N.H. 171, 121 A.2d 781.]

In Leininger, supra, the latter part of the rule was expressed in more specific terms by the following quotation from Ryan v. Feeney & Sheehan Bldg. Co., 239 N.Y. 43, 145 N.E. 321, 41 A.L.R. 1:

“ * * * A builder or contractor is justified in relying upon the plans and specifications which he has contracted to follow, unless they are so apparently defective that an ordinary builder of ordinary prudence would be put upon notice that the work was dangerous and likely to cause injury.”

See also Prosser on Torts, 2d Edition, p. 519, and 3d Edition, id., p. 695, and notice Littlehale v. E. I. duPont de Nemours & Co., [U.S.D.C., S.D., N.Y.], 268 F.Supp. 791, 802, footnote 16, as follows:

“Indeed, one Court has gone so far as to absolve the contractor, following plans, of responsibility without even appending the ‘glaring and obvious’ limitation.
“ ‘When the work has been performed in accordance with plans and specifications furnished by the owner which the contractor is bound to follow and the completed work has been accepted by the owner, the contractor is not liable to a third person for injuries resulting from a structural defect. * * * [T]he injury-causing defect is in the plans and specifications and not the result of negligence on the part of the contractor.’ Barnthouse v. California Steel Bldgs. Co., 215 Cal.App.2d 72, 29 Cal.Rptr. 835, 836 (Dist.Ct.App.1963).” [Emphasis added.]

Notice also Lancaster v. Connecticut Mut. Life Ins. Co., 92 Mo. 460, 5 S.W. 23, 25, in which it was said:

“1. A question made by the appellant is that Barnes & Morrison were independent contractors and they, and not the defendant, are liable for the injuries resulting to the plaintiff’s house. If the negligence which produced the injury was not in the workmanship, or the materials to be furnished by the contractors, but in the plans and specifications, then the defendant cannot be relieved [328]*328from liability, or shift the responsibility to the contractors. [citing cases.]” [Emphasis added.]

In the present case, although plaintiff’s Second Amended Petition alleged that defendant designed, as well as installed, the sprinkler system, it does riot allege any defect in installation, materials or workmanship except as related to bursting or leaking pipes in the building’s attic space. The substance of plaintiff’s alleged cause of action against defendant is contained in said Amended Petition’s paragraph “VII”, which reads as follows :

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1974 OK 115, 527 P.2d 325, 1974 Okla. LEXIS 411, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/contractors-of-engineering-manufacturing-of-oklahoma-inc-v-williams-okla-1974.