Walker v. Vail

Sobeloff, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal brings up for review a judgment obtained by an injured electrical worker to his own use and to the use of the equitable plaintiff, the insurer of his employer who paid him compensation for the injuries. The judgment was against the manufacturer and installer of an overhead motor court or garage door, the mechanism of which failed, catapulting the worker and causing him to fall a distance of about 20 feet. The principal question is whether there was legally sufficient evidence to justify the submission of the issue of negligence to the jury.

The building in which the garage door was being installed is at 230 Franklintown Road, Baltimore, Md., owned by DeBoy Smith, Inc. and leased to the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. The term of the lease began on February 1, 1949, when the building was still uncompleted. One of the improvements for which the owner had arranged was the installation of two large overhead garage doors to be equipped with electrical motors to operate them. The defendant, Rowe Manufacturing Company, was the manufacturer of the door; the installer was the defendant, William F. Walker, Jr. The defendants are in dispute as to the precise relation existing between them, Rowe claiming that Walker was an independent contractor for whose negligence, if any, it (Rowe) was not responsible, and Walker claiming that he was in reality the manufacturer’s representative.

The plaintiff agreed with Walker’s contention in this respect, but we need not further consider this issue because of the view we take oh the main question, namely, the legal sufficiency of the evidence to show negligence on the part of either or both defendants. ³²⁵ The garage doors were installed in February, 1949, and their motors on the following March 4th, but as the electricity had not been connected with the motors, the doors were for a time operated manually by means of a sprocket and continuous chain accessible to persons on the ground level. On March 29th the plaintiff, Vail, in the course of his employment, was checking wires in a switch box attached to a roof beam. He was standing with one foot on the open south garage door, which was then in a horizontal position and constituted, as it were, a floor under him, and his other foot was on the door track of the north door. As the south door was open, its spring was slack; but the north door being closed, its spring was extended and taut.

As the plaintiff stood there examining the wiring in the switch box he “had the sensation of being catapulted” to the ground. He was unable to tell more about the manner of his injury. Other witnesses testified that “some of the mechanism had loosened up and recoiled, flew apart and fell to the floor”. The falling mechanism had been installed on the track of the north door upon which one of the workman’s feet rested at the time of the accident.

The injured man was taken to the hospital by one of the witnesses who returned to the scene of the accident an hour or two later. He testified, “we looked at more or less all the mechanism that was on the ground, the spring or the sheave”, which he described as a pulley that is held by a yoke with a pin through it that in turn is held in position by a cotter pin or key. In the inspection which the witness said he “possibly” made, he saw no cotter key in the mechanism on the floor, or on the floor itself. It was later found that of the mechanical assemblies which remained in place overhead at least one or two had cotter keys missing.

At the trial the inquiry was, assuming that the cotter keys were missing at the time of the accident and that this caused or contributed to the accident, had these keys ever been installed in the mechanism and, if so, when and by whom were they removed? As the direct ³²⁶ testimony is unclear, the litigants seek to draw various inferences, favorable to their respectiye positions; but-the important legal question to which counsel addressed themselves, both below and in • this court, was, upon whom is the burden of showing the details of the accident. The defendants., unite in arguing that the plaintiff, had the burden of proving the defendants’ negligence and that the failure in proof entitled them to a directed verdict. The plaintiff maintained that the circumstances permit an inference of defendants’ negligence.

The rule is, of course, that the burden of proving the defendants’ negligence rests upon the plaintiff. There are, indeed, circumstances where, without shifting this burden, an inference of negligence on the part of a defendant may arise from the circumstances, if unexplained. This doctrine, called res ipsa loquitur, may be invoked by a plaintiff “where the injury arises from some condition or event that is in its very nature so obviously destructive of the safety of persons or property and is so tortious in its quality as, in the first instance at least, to permit no inference save that of negligence on the part of the person in control of the injurious agency”. Strasburger