De La Torre v. Valenzuela

SHINN, P. J.

Appeal by plaintiff from a judgment of nonsuit in an action to recover damages for personal injuries entered in favor of both defendants, Adolph B, Valenzuela and Albert Alongé.

The accident occurred in 1947 during the construction of a building for Southern California Edison Company at Redondo Beach, when plaintiff’s leg was run over by a dump truck. In order to explain how plaintiff’s injuries occurred, it is necessary to describe the locale of the accident. A wall of the building was being constructed of concrete. Forms, made of sheets of plywood, 4x8, of 9/16ths thickness were used. These forms were held in place by 2x4’s with steel bolts. After use, the materials of each form would be removed and lowered with ropes from the top of the completed portion of the wall to workmen on the ground. These workmen cleaned the plywood sheets of any remaining cement, removed the nails, and stacked the sheets in piles to be used again to make new forms. Each plywood sheet weighed 40 or more pounds, depending on the amount of cement remaining thereon. At the time of the accident, the wall had been built to a height of from 85 to 90 feet, and the sheets, while being lowered, would strike windows or other projections on the side of the wall so that at times they would bounce outward from 12 to 15 feet, There was evidence that these pieces would be

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scattered all around the excavation. On the west side of the wall being constructed was an excavation approximately 15 feet deep which ran the entire length of the wall, a distance of 265 feet. The wall ran north and south, and the width of the excavation was from the west side of the wall almost to the sidewalk line of Hermosa Avenue which runs in a northerly and southerly direction. The bottom of the excavation was of soft sand and another or second excavation was being dug therein, beginning at the south end of the first excavation and extending in a northerly direction some 150 feet. Boards, to form a driveway or ramp, had been laid on the bottom of the excavation, about 20 feet west of the wall, from 11th Street on the north to the second excavation which was to be used for inlet or outlet pipes. At the 11th Street, or north end of the ramp it curved for about 12 to 14 feet as it rose to street level but otherwise the driveway was a straight course in the excavation and the view was unobstructed from one end of the ramp to the other. The ramp, or plank driveway, was used by men operating dump trucks as they backed down from 11th Street to the bottom of the excavation where the trucks would be filled with the excavated soil by a power shovel.