Ostrowski v. Crawford Door Sales Co.

217 A.2d 758, 207 Pa. Super. 424, 1966 Pa. Super. LEXIS 1134
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedMarch 24, 1966
DocketAppeals, 748 and 749
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 217 A.2d 758 (Ostrowski v. Crawford Door Sales Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ostrowski v. Crawford Door Sales Co., 217 A.2d 758, 207 Pa. Super. 424, 1966 Pa. Super. LEXIS 1134 (Pa. Ct. App. 1966).

Opinions

Opinion by

Jacobs, J.,

On January 29, 1963, the plaintiff, an employee of the Scranton Casket Company, was injured by a . descending overhead door on his employer’s premises. He brought an action.in trespass against Crawford Door Sales Company.of Scranton (Crawford), alleging that -Crawford was negligent in installing the door and that ¿s a result of this negligence, the .door collapsed, causing plaintiff’s injuries. Crawford joined Edward J. Libertoski as an additional defendant, alleging that Libertoski was an independent contractor who installed the door furnished by Crawford and that Libertoski was responsible for ■ any injuries. Libertoski joined Scranton Casket Company (Casket), alleging that his [427]*427work was satisfactory to Casket, was accepted by Casket, and that the premises were in the exclusive possession of Casket at the time of the accident so that any responsibility for a dangerous condition was Casket’s.

The case was tried in September, 1964, before President Judge Hoban and a jury. The jury made special findings of negligence and causation as to each one of the defendants and found all three jointly and severally liable, awarding a verdict of $10,000. Crawford and Libertoski filed motions for judgment n.o.v., which were denied by the lower court. They appeal from the judgment entered on the verdict.

The following facts were established at trial: Crawford had a contract with Casket to provide an overhead door completely installed at the entrance to Casket’s new factory extension. Crawford supplied the door in sections and the necessary hardware. Libertoski and his workmen picked up this material and installed the door for a fee to be paid by Crawford, as had been their usual business practice for about seventeen years. Libertoski paid his own workmen.

The door in question was a verticle lift, five-section-overhead door, ten feet wide and nine feet high which had been installed about one week before the accident. It weighed between 200 and 280 pounds and was used for ingress and egress by trucks and employees. Unlike the usual garage door which lifts to a certain extent and then, folds back so that a section becomes parallel with the ceiling, this door went straight up alongside the upper wall of the factory structure. Operating on guide rails or tracks on either side of the doorway, the door was held by cables attached to the lower section of the door which led to tension springs affixed to the structure. The door was supposed to move easily in either direction when comparatively slight pressure was applied. When the door was installed, the floor of the company’s factory addition had [428]*428not been completed. To allow for the proposed concrete floor, a door stop had to be provided about eight inches above the ground level. Cleats, wooden two by fours or sixes, six inches in height, were nailed to the door frame and a section of angle iron (1*4" x 1 x y8") was bolted through the guide rails to the door frame to provide a stop for the descending door at the eight-inch mark.

In addition to the unfinished floor in the building, the overhead construction was also incomplete when the door was installed so that snow or water found its way into the factory addition where the roof of the addition adjoined its wall. The water descended the side of the wall above the door frame and onto the door. Since there was no heat at the time in the addition and temperatures were very low. that month, the water froze and ice accumulated on the exterior and interior of the door surface.

. Although the door worked satisfactorily the day it was installed, according to Libertoski, a ■ Casket employee testified that .it “never worked like it should” and “was always hard to control.” On the day before the accident a Casket foreman, investigating a complaint about it, tried the door and found that it was. hard to push up and “if I didn’t hold.it, it would have fell down.” Casket’s Secretary-Treasurer testified that an employee complained to him about the door on January 28, 1963, but that he didn’t look at the door and he didn’t remember whether, he called Crawford or did anything about it.

On January 29, 1963, plaintiff intended to go outside during his lunch, hour. A co-worker, who noticed that the door was hard to raise, preceded him by some distance and was too far in advance for plaintiff to ask. him to hold the door for plaintiff. Plaintiff “reached for the door, and when I did, I just heard like [429]*429a rifle shot, and that’s all I remembered.” When he recovered consciousness, plaintiff’s arm was caught between a section of the door that had left the track, bending upward and inward, and the remainder of the door. Plaintiff was severely injured and ho question is raised concerning the amount of the verdict.

Both Crawford and Libertoski, in requesting this court to enter judgment n.o.v., contend that there was no evidence of negligence on the part of either and that plaintiff failed to prove that any alleged negligence of either was the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries. After applying the oft-repeated' governing principle that the verdict-winner is entitled to the benefit of all findings that reasonably could have been made in his favor and that all contrary evidence is to be rejected, Jemison v. Pfeifer, 397 Pa. 81, 152 A. 2d 697 (1959), we reject their contentions and affirm the judgment of the lower court.

I.

Section 388 of the Restatement of Torts 2d provides that:

“One who supplies directly or through a third person a chattel for another to use is subject to liability to those whom the supplier should expect to use the chattel with the consent of the other or to be endangered by its probable use, for physical harm caused by the use of the chattel in the manner for which and by a person for whose use it is supplied, if the supplier

(a) knows or has reason to know that the chattel is or is likely to be dangerous for the use for which it is supplied, ¿nd

(b) has no reason to believe that those for whose use the chattel is supplied will realize its dangerous condition, and

[430]*430(c) fails to exercise reasonable care to inform them of its dangerous condition or of the facts which make it likely to be dangerous.”1

In this case plaintiff, who was using the door for the first time, introduced evidence to show that the door was installed one week before the accident; that two wooden cleats and an angle iron were installed to keep the door, from descending all the way to the earth-floor, and that the door “was always hard to control.” There was evidence that the adjustable springs caused the door to be hard to lift and lowered it too fast, a situation which progressively worsened, and that because of the rapid descent and weight, the stops placed eight inches from the ground were not sufficient to prevent the door from leaving the guide rails. There was also evidence that temperatures went below the zero degree mark in the week between installation and the accident, and that rain or snow froze into ice on the door, adding about 70 pounds to the weight of the door.

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Ostrowski v. Crawford Door Sales Co.
217 A.2d 758 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1966)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
217 A.2d 758, 207 Pa. Super. 424, 1966 Pa. Super. LEXIS 1134, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ostrowski-v-crawford-door-sales-co-pasuperct-1966.