Laudwig v. Central Missouri Power & Light Co.

24 S.W.2d 625, 324 Mo. 676, 1930 Mo. LEXIS 530
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedFebruary 4, 1930
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 24 S.W.2d 625 (Laudwig v. Central Missouri Power & Light Co.) 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
Laudwig v. Central Missouri Power & Light Co., 24 S.W.2d 625, 324 Mo. 676, 1930 Mo. LEXIS 530 (Mo. 1930).

Opinions

This is an action for damages for personal injuries. The basis of recovery is that defendant's wire negligently was permitted to be and to remain uninsulated, whereby electricity escaped therefrom and struck plaintiff, who was then on the roof of a house, which he was engaged in moving, and distant from the wire from five to eight feet. The jury returned, in favor of plaintiff, a verdict for $15,000, and defendant appealed from the judgment entered thereon.

The evidence adduced on the part of plaintiff warrants the finding that defendant, on May 21, 1925, owned an electrical plant and maintained wires strung on poles in and near the city of Kirksville, which carried electrical current. The poles and wires, used in transmitting current to La Plata, followed the east fence bounding State Highway No. 7. At the place where plaintiff was injured the cross-arms on the poles carried porcelain insulators, to which the wires were fastened. The cross-arms were approximately twenty-five feet above the ground. However, the wires carrying the electricity sagged to an altitude of about twenty-three feet. At street crossings and over highways the cross-arms were thirty-five to forty feet in height. At the place of injury, a gate was erected to permit access to the field.

Plaintiff was engaged in the business of moving houses. On May 21, 1925, he was engaged in moving a house, which was placed on a truck, and the altitude of the house and the truck together was twenty and one-half feet above the ground. We infer that the house was about fifteen feet in width, as about fifteen feet of the fence had been taken down to permit access to an intended site in the field. The house was constructed in the shape of an L, and what may be called the L portion projected through the opening in the fence eight to twelve feet east into the field. Also erected along the east boundary fence were poles, east of the light poles, carrying telephone wires, about fifteen feet in height. The telephone wires, it seems, impeded the progress of the house into the field by catching on the east end of the L. To obviate the difficulty, plaintiff climbed to the roof and sat astride the ridge, a foot and a half to two feet from the east end of the L. With help from the ground, plaintiff raised a telephone wire by means of a rope, so that it rested on the roof. It was also his purpose to raise the two other wires by the same method. Plaintiff, when he was struck, was from five to ten feet distant from the nearest uninsulated wire, which carried *Page 681 13,200 volts. Plaintiff wore a hat, the sweat band of which was damp. While plaintiff was letting down the rope for use in pulling up the telephone wires, a witness testified that he saw a streak of electricity leave the electric wire and evolve into a ball of fire as big as a hen egg and strike plaintiff, whereupon he fell to the ground from the roof. After the occurrence plaintiff's hat was found to have two holes burned into it, about the size of a lead pencil, but it had no other burns on it. The holes in the hat were found on each side, just over the places where it rested above the ears. In addition thereto, two burns appeared on plaintiff's head, just above the ears, in juxtaposition to the holes in the hat.

The house was raised west of the highway and was to be placed on a site to the east. At the time of the injury it had been moved along the highway about a block, estimated at from two hundred to four hundred feet. Plaintiff knew that defendant maintained high tension wires at the place mentioned, and that it was dangerous to touch any of them. The engineer, in charge of the traction engine pulling the truck on which the house was being conveyed, said he heard a snap and was then stunned by the electric current.

Plaintiff's evidence further warrants the finding that, after plaintiff's injuries but before the house was moved from its position, defendant's line superintendent, who for a number of years had been in its service, visited the scene of the occurrence and examined the situation, including the hat, and there, in the presence of several people, called attention to the two holes in the hat, stating that that was what caused it, and that he had known electrical current to jump six to eight feet. Moreover, defendant's manager stated on two separate occasions that he had known electrical current to arc or jump a distance of six to eight feet, although this statement was denied by him when he took the stand.

Defendant's evidence tends to show by a number of expert witnesses, to-wit, electrical and practical engineers, that it was impossible for electricity to jump or arc over sixty-three hundredths of an inch, even under the most favorable circumstances, and that it could not jump or are a space of five feet without contact. It further tended to show that no known or practical method obtained whereby wires, carrying 13,200 volts of electricity, could be insulated to afford protection to a person or object having contact therewith.

Defendant's evidence further tended to show that plaintiff's head or hat touched the high tension wire.

Other pertinent facts will appear in the course of the opinion.

The petition avers that plaintiff, while engaged in moving a house along and across a state highway, at a point about a half mile south of the city of Kirksville, was struck and injured as the result of *Page 682 dangerous and deadly electrical current escaping from a wire, owned and operated by defendant and over which it transmitted the current, which defendant negligently permitted to be and to remain uninsulated. The answer contains, first, a general denial; second, a plea that plaintiff was negligent, in that he attempted to move a house under a transmission wire which he knew was dangerous, and in that he came in contact with said wires.

I. The defendant demurred to the petition on the ground that it fails to state a cause of action. The court overruled the demurrer and defendant assigns error. Several theories are advanced to support the contention.

(a) Defendant's first contention charges that the petition contains no averment of a duty to plaintiff on defendant's part to insulate its wires. The petition avers that plaintiff was moving a house along and across a public highway alongDuty to and over which defendant's wire was suspended, and thatInsulate defendant negligently permitted the wire to be and toWire. remain uninsulated. The petition impliedly alleges, at least, that plaintiff was in the exercise of a lawful occupation in a place where he had a legal right to be. Under these circumstances the defendant owed him the duty of protection by insulating the wires. [20 C.J. 355; 9 R.C.L. p. 1210, sec. 20.]

The next specification charges that "the petition ignores the fact that the wires were insulated by being elevated to a height where defendant had no reason to anticipate orAnticipating expect any one would come in contact therewith."Injury: The petition avers that plaintiff was on the roofHigh Wire. of the house being moved. It is common knowledge that houses are occasionally, at least, moved along and across highways in this State. From the recitals of the petition it may then be inferred that defendant could anticipate and expect lawful users of the highway to come into close proximity to its wires.

The last specification of the first point asserts that it is contrary to well known physical and scientific facts that electrical current can jump five to eight feet. By this specification we are asked to take judicial notice of a matter which appears, we think, to be at least a debatableElectricity: fact.

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Bluebook (online)
24 S.W.2d 625, 324 Mo. 676, 1930 Mo. LEXIS 530, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/laudwig-v-central-missouri-power-light-co-mo-1930.