Hart-Bartlett-Sturtevant Grain Co. v. Aetna Insurance

293 S.W.2d 913, 365 Mo. 1134, 1956 Mo. LEXIS 584
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedSeptember 10, 1956
Docket44944
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 293 S.W.2d 913 (Hart-Bartlett-Sturtevant Grain Co. v. Aetna Insurance) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hart-Bartlett-Sturtevant Grain Co. v. Aetna Insurance, 293 S.W.2d 913, 365 Mo. 1134, 1956 Mo. LEXIS 584 (Mo. 1956).

Opinion

*1138 VAN OSDOL, C.

[915] This is an action on three certificates of insurance issued to plaintiff, the lessee-operator of the River-Rail Elevator located in Kansas City, Kansas. The certificates were issued by Underwriters Grain Association for and on behalf of the forty-eight defendant-respondent insurance companies which participated in the coverage for loss of grains and loss due to interruption of business, the measure of recovery for loss due to interruption of business being the directly resulting reduction of gross earnings. The certificate insuring the grain, contents of the elevator, was in the provisional amount of $5,000,000. Plaintiff sought recovery on this certificate in Count I of its petition. The coverage for loss of earnings was in two certificates, each in the amount of $342,000 — (1) covering reduction in gross earnings for such length of time as would be required to rebuild, repair or replace such part of the elevator facilities as might become damaged or destroyed commencing with the date of damage or destruction, and (2) covering reduction of gross earnings for such length of time as would be required to resume normal operations commencing* with the date of restoration. Plaintiff declared on these certificates in Count II of its petition. The three certificates contained identical extended coverage endorsements bjr which, for an additional premium, coverage was extended to include direct loss by ‘ ‘ explosion. ’ ’

The trial court submitted the issues of plaintiff’s case-to the jury. One decisive supporting issue was whether plaintiff’s losses were due to explosion, or explosions. The jury found for the plaintiff, assessing its whole loss, with interest, in the total amount of $769',522.74; however, the trial court sustained defendants’ motion for judgment in. accordance with their motion for a directed verdict, set aside the verdict and judgment for plaintiff, and entered judgment for defendants, but overruled defendants’ motion for a new trial. The trial court in sustaining defendants’ motion for judgment specified the grounds: (1) the evidence conclusively shows that all of plaintiff’s loss was *1139 caused by flood (a hazard not insured against), not by any explosion; (2) there is no evidence on which a jury could base a verdict for plaintiff on the explosion issue without resorting to guesswork,, speculation, conjecture and surmise; and (3) it has previously been judicially determined that the very occurrences in the case at bar were not explosions, - and therefore plaintiff is estopped from relitigating that question. Plaintiff has appealed.

The River-Rail Elevator is owned, by the City of Kansas City, Kansas. It is located [916] about a thousand feet from the Missouri River- bank in the public levee area known as the Fairfax District, and is connected to a public wharf by a gallery with grain conveyor so that grain may be received and delivered from and to barges. It it also served by railroads- and trucks.

• The structure off the elévator, consists of a headhouse (containing much of the elevator-operating machinery and bins-, including at least one “dryer bin” at the basement level)¡ and of two batteries of round and interstice or “star” bins, one battery consisting of ninety-five bins and the other of eighty-eight. The round bins each have an inside diameter of nineteen feet and a capacity of 24,400 bushels of grain. The interstice bins (comprising the spaces between the exterior walls of round bins) each has a capacity of 5,500 bushels. The bins are approximately one hundred five feet in height with walls of concrete six inches thick. The whole of the two batteries, of bins is surmounted by a one-story structure called the “Texas floor.” A relatively small, square aperture in the top of each and all of the bins of both batteries opens through the floor of the Texas floor. The bottoms of the bins are at the approximate ground level and constitute the ceiling of the basement of the elevator structure. July 13, 1951, all of the -round and interstice bins, except nine, contained grain in some, quantity. The grains were wheat, corn, and grain sorghums.

A “draw-off” hole five feet in diameter is located in the center of the base or bottom (concrete “slab” one foot thick) of each bin. The slab is “hoppered” in a thirty-six degree slope down to the “draw-off” hole. This conical upper side of each slab bin-base is called the “concrete hopper.” Octagonal “metal hopper bottoms” are fixed below to receive grain passing through the holes in the concrete hoppers. The -hopper bottoms are attached to the concrete on the under side of the base of each bin. The hopper bottoms are “funneled” down at various angles and are connected with- elongated rectangular metal “draw-off” spouts angling off at various degrees, through, which, by opening slides or gates controlled by ratchets, grain may be permitted to'flow from the bins through the holes in the concrete hoppers .and on ■ down through the hopper bottoms and connected spouts onto belt conveyors. The hopper bottoms of all of the forty-three bins with which we are directly concerned are alike in shape and size, except one — the rectangular metal hopper bottom of a dryer *1140 bin — this metal bottom is bolted directly to the under side of the concrete base of the bin.

Friday, July 13, 1951, the flooding waters of the Kaw Biver inundated areas of the industrial districts of Kansas City, Kansas, and in the late afternoon of July 14th, the waters broke through the river levee and inundated the area wherein the elevator is located. During the night of July 14th, waters came into the basement of the elevator, flooding everything therein, including the spouts and hopper bottoms, and rose until the waters had reached a level of “slightly more than two feet” within the concrete hoppers of all of the bins. On the following day, July 15th, the waters began receding from the pavement and ground in the elevator area, but the basement of the elevator remained filled with water. Limited pumping-out operations were commenced on Monday, July 16th. The grains in the concrete hoppers had been wetted by the floods, however, and in the morning of July 17th grain was noticed on top of the water in the basement — it was ascertained that the hopper bottoms (“tanks”) of some of the round and interstice bins were “down,” permitting quantities of grain to come down through the five-foot draw-off holes into the water.

Each of the octagonally-shaped metal hopper bottoms had been held in place against the under side of the “slab” bottom of a bin by sixteen “clips,” — strips of low-carbon hot-rolled ductile steel, one-fourth inch thick, two inches wide, and'six inches long; however, the contact between- the [917] metallic hopper bottoms and the slab was not airtight, watertight, or gastight. The sixteen clips had been fixed at only approximately equal intervals around the periphery of the draw-off hole in the base of a bin. Each of the clips had been fixed by a nut with washer to a five-eighths-inch bolt embedded in the concrete of the bin-base, the bolt passing through the clip two inches from one end, and the other end (“moment arm”) of each and all of the sixteen clips of each bin lay under and supported the 2"xl-]/2" angle-iron flange (%6" thick) riveted to the top of the sheet metal of each hopper bottom.

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Bluebook (online)
293 S.W.2d 913, 365 Mo. 1134, 1956 Mo. LEXIS 584, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hart-bartlett-sturtevant-grain-co-v-aetna-insurance-mo-1956.