Ryan v. Commonwealth Edison Co.

885 N.E.2d 544, 381 Ill. App. 3d 877, 319 Ill. Dec. 273, 2008 Ill. App. LEXIS 280
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedMarch 28, 2008
Docket1-06-3309
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 885 N.E.2d 544 (Ryan v. Commonwealth Edison Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Court of Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ryan v. Commonwealth Edison Co., 885 N.E.2d 544, 381 Ill. App. 3d 877, 319 Ill. Dec. 273, 2008 Ill. App. LEXIS 280 (Ill. Ct. App. 2008).

Opinion

JUSTICE JOSEPH GORDON

delivered the opinion of the court:

Electrician Daniel Ryan was injured in an on-the-job circuit breaker explosion. He brought suit against Commonwealth Edison Company (Com Ed), alleging that Com Ed was responsible for the electrical current that flowed into the building and that the severity of the accident was increased by Com Ed’s negligent failure to adequately perform its ongoing maintenance duties. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Com Ed on grounds that Ryan’s claim was time-barred by the construction statute of repose, since it occurred more than 10 years after the electrical system was first installed. For the reasons that follow, we reverse and remand.

I. BACKGROUND

Viewing the evidence liberally in favor of the nonmoving party, as is appropriate under a summary judgment motion (Purtill v. Hess, 111 Ill. 2d 229, 240, 489 N.E.2d 867, 871 (1986)), we are presented with the following description of events as alleged by Ryan.

Ryan was an electrician employed by the City of Chicago. On April 2, 2001, the day of the accident, Ryan was working in the heating and refrigeration (H&R) building at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, performing maintenance work on a circuit breaker. He was working with Byron Glista, an employee of High Voltage Maintenance Corporation (High Voltage). Com Ed installed and owned the transformer (known as transformer number 6) which provided electricity to the circuit breaker.

The procedure for the maintenance operation was that Ryan would first remove the circuit breaker from the cubicle in which it was housed; Glista would then perform the necessary repairs on it, and Ryan would reinstall the circuit breaker in its cubicle. However, when Ryan reinstalled this circuit breaker, it exploded, causing serious injury to Ryan.

Ryan filed a complaint in two counts. The first count was against Glista’s employer, High Voltage. In that count, which is not currently at issue, Ryan contended that High Voltage committed negligence through the actions of its employee and was therefore responsible for Ryan’s injuries.

It is Ryan’s second count, which was against Com Ed, that is at issue in the instant appeal. Ryan alleged that, at the time of the accident, Com Ed had a duty to exercise ordinary care in the repair and maintenance of transformer number 6, which it had breached. Specifically, he alleged that Com Ed:

“(a) Carelessly and negligently repaired and maintained transformer number 6 which caused the [circuit breaker] to explode;
(b) Carelessly and negligently failed to maintain and repair transformer number 6 in a safe and reasonable manner given the activities then and there taking place; and
(c) Otherwise, carelessly and negligently maintained transformer number 6.”

Ryan further alleged that this negligent maintenance by Com Ed was the proximate cause of the explosion, and thus, of the injuries he sustained.

On July 14, 2006, Com Ed moved for summary judgment. It argued that Ryan’s claims against it were time-barred under the Illinois construction statute of repose (735 ILCS 5/13 — 214(b) (West 2006)), which forecloses all claims for negligent design that are brought more than 10 years after a fixture to real property has been installed. Because the parties agreed that the power system at issue was over 20 years old, Com Ed contended that it was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

In support of its motion, Com Ed referred to a report prepared by John Nelson, the electrical engineer retained as an expert by Ryan, as well as Nelson’s subsequent deposition testimony. Com Ed contended that the only fault that Nelson found in Com Ed’s system was in its original design and installation, as Nelson never alleged failure to repair as a cause of Ryan’s injury.

Nelson based his report, dated June 7, 2004, upon a site inspection that he conducted on April 10, 2001, eight days after the accident occurred, as well as various documents that he had reviewed. In that report, Nelson stated that the transformers supplying power to the circuit breaker involved in the accident were owned by Com Ed, and they were set up in such a way that a resistor linked to the circuit breaker, which was supposed to reduce the electrical current to 300 amps, was shorted out. Hence, in his professional opinion, one of the reasons that Ryan was injured was that “ComEd was careless in the design, construction, commissioning, and follow-up testing of the incoming power system.”

In his deposition, dated March 11, 2005, Nelson explained that electrical voltage is similar to water pressure in a hose: the greater the voltage, the greater the flow of power. The purpose of a resistor is to limit the flow of power. In this case, if the resistor at issue had been working correctly, it would have restricted the electric current to 300 amps. However, Nelson stated that the resistor had shorted out and become ineffective. As a result, the current flowing through the circuit breaker at the time of the accident was unrestricted and could have been as high as 28,000 amps. Nelson gave his opinion that if the resistor had not been shorted out and the electrical current had been limited to 300 amps, Ryan’s injuries from the accident would have been less severe or possibly nonexistent.

In elaborating on the reasons for the resistor failure, Nelson stated that the transformer installed by Com Ed included a component known as a “neutral Xo bushing” that had shorted out, thus causing the resistor to short out. Nelson opined that this bushing was probably placed when the system was first installed.

Nelson further stated that in his report, he had said that Com Ed needed to change its system setup to prevent the resistor from being shorted; nevertheless, when he went to inspect the site again the day before he gave his deposition, he discovered that nothing had been done to correct the problem. That is, he said that the configuration of the neutral Xo bushing had not been changed and that the same dangerous condition still existed. He repeated his opinion that Com Ed’s flaws in its system exacerbated the injuries Ryan received in the accident as a result of the negligence of his coworker.

In his response to Com Ed’s motion for summary judgment, Ryan argued that the construction statute of repose did not apply to his claims, because he was not alleging negligence in the way the system was designed but rather in Com Ed’s ongoing maintenance duties. “[T]he Court should not allow Com Ed to convert Plaintiffs negligence Count II of the Complaint against Com Ed into a *** construction design case,” he urged. He further argued that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Com Ed’s failure to properly maintain the electrical system was a proximate cause of Ryan’s injuries.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
885 N.E.2d 544, 381 Ill. App. 3d 877, 319 Ill. Dec. 273, 2008 Ill. App. LEXIS 280, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ryan-v-commonwealth-edison-co-illappct-2008.