By Melanie Deeds
Legal News
A divided Michigan Supreme Court has cleared installers of a dryer at a Macomb County residence from any responsibility in connection with a 2007 explosion that destroyed the home and injured the homeowner and her two children.
The 4-3 decision, issued along party lines, was handed down Thursday in the Hill v Sears Roebuck & Co.
The Clinton Township home, owned by Marcy Hill, exploded after Hill unknowingly turned on the gas to an uncapped laundry area gas line and her daughter used a cigarette lighter to light a candle.
The gas line, which was left turned off and uncapped by the former owners, was behind an electric dryer that Hill had installed shortly after she bought the house in 2003.
Hill, along with her two children who were living with her, escaped the blast but were injured.
The trio sued the store that sold the appliance as well as the companies that delivered the dryer and the contractors who installed it.
Among other matters, the plaintiffs argued the installers made an existing danger worse by locating the electric dryer in front of the gas line. The Hills argued the installers should have warned them about the gas line, refused to install the dryer or capped it.
The installers argue in part that they owe the plaintiffs no duty apart from installing the dryer as they contracted to do, and that they had nothing to do with the explosion.
Although the defendants sought to have the case against them dismissed, both the trial court and the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the plaintiffs’ case could go forward.
The Court of Appeals determined in part that the installers did owe the plaintiffs a duty because, the appellate court said, the installers created a “new hazard” that they should have anticipated “would cause serious damages.”
The high court disagreed.
“The installers owed no legal duty to plaintiffs with respect to the uncapped gas line,” said the high court in the majority opinion written by Justice Mary Beth Kelly. She was joined by Chief Justice Robert P. Young Jr., Stephen J. Markman and Brian K.Zahra. “The installers and plaintiffs had a limited relationship that did not require the installers to undertake any action relative to the
uncapped gas line, and the delivery and installation of the dryer did not create a new dangerous condition with respect to the uncapped gas line or make an existing dangerous condition more
hazardous.”
The dissent, written by Justice Marilyn Kelly, said it was the responsibility of the installers “to warn of the potential hazards the gas pipe posed before their installation of the dryer concealed it.
“The installers had a duty to take reasonable safeguards to protect plaintiffs from harm and a duty to conform their conduct to that of a reasonable person when installing the washer and dryer,” it continued. Justices Michael F. Cavanagh and Diane M. Hathaway joined in the dissent.
Kelly added that “a duty to warn arose because of the relationship between the parties and because the installers had superior knowledge of the dangerous characteristics of an upcapped gas line.”
Two days before the explosion, according to court records, Marcy Hill encountered some problems with her kitchen faucet and pipes under the sink.
After seeking repair advice, she attempted to turn off the main water supply by turning various valves in the room and, in so doing, inadvertently opened the natural gas valve supplying the uncapped gas line in the kitchen.
After smelling natural gas, the records show, she attempted to shut off the valve by returning it to what she thought to be its original position, but did not close the valve.
In her dissent, Kelly noted that the Hills “did not know the uncapped pipe was a gas line.
Kelley said she would have “imposed a simple duty on defendant installers to warn of the dangers, limited to the area they occupied during the installation process and would not extend the duty to potential hazards unrelated to the electric dryer of its installation.
“The duty to use due care existed regardless of whether the installer’s alleged negligence created a new hazard or increased the danger of an existing one, but the installers also owed plaintiffs a duty to not worsen an existing hazard,” Kelley wrote. “The installers increased the existing danger by installing the dryer in such a way as to conceal the uncapped gas line.”
In contrast, the majority opinion said the installers owed “no duty to warn because of the plaintiffs’ ignorance of and mistaken assumptions regarding the nature of the gas line.”
The Hills were aware of the gas line’s existence “because it was visible for a few weeks before the dryer was installed in front of it and knowledge of facts putting a person of ordinary prudence on inquiry is equivalent to actual knowledge of the facts that a reasonably diligent inquiry would have disclosed.”
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