Newton v. United Electric, Gas & Power Co.

SMITH, J.

The following is the opinion of the trial judge referred to in the decision of the court:

“In this case the facts are briefly these: Defendant maintains a transformer, which is attached to cross-beams. The cross-beams are fastened to piers under the approach to the Long Beach wharf and pavilion. The transformer and crossbeams are about fourteen feet from the ground. Prom the shore side, two wires run to the transformer carrying a large voltage of electricity. Two wires run from the transformer, carrying a much lower voltage, to supply lights for the wharf and pavilion. At the time of the injury complained of, the plaintiff was employed by the city of Long Beach to sweep the wharf and pavilion and perforin other duties in line with such work. Early in the morning of the accident, plaintiff’s attention was attracted to the fact that smoke was coming from one of the cross-beams. Plaintiff thereupon placed some boxes alongside of a small shack standing near, and by the aid of these boxes climbed upon the flat roof of the shack. A woman, who had attracted plaintiff’s attention to the smoking cross-beam, passed him a small bucket of water which he threw at or upon the beam. Thereupon plaintiff fell or was thrown from the shack to the ground. He was soon found in a partially unconscious condition. An examination, made soon afterward, showed a loss of skin upon the backs of his hands and an injury to

his

back. One of- the issues was whether these wounds were bruises caused by his fall from the shack to a board walk or whether they were electric burns. The plaintiff’s theory of the case is that when he threw the water upon the cross-beam, a circuit was formed thereby, through the agency of the water, electricity then escaping at the cross-beam, was conducted to the plaintiff and through him and the shack to the ground. It was a wooden shack, and it is hardly supposable, though admitting this to have been a damp, foggy morning, that the

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wooden shack could have been a sufficiently good conductor of electricity to have completed the circuit so that plaintiff could have been shocked, even if it be assumed that the electricity would leave the cross-beam and travel to plaintiff through the medium of a column of water or through the air saturated with water the distance from him to the beam. But plaintiff testified that as he was climbing up, he received quite a severe electric shock when he first put his hand upon the shack. If this is true, it would seem that the shack was not ‘grounded,’ for, had it been ‘grounded,’ there could have been in it no accumulation of static electricity from a leakage of the service wires that ran into it. And if it was not ‘grounded,’ plaintiff, when standing upon it, could not have received through his body a current from the cross-beam either by the agency of the water or otherwise. But it seems quite improbable that the electricity would leave the crossbeam to take a path afforded by such a poor conductor as a column of water, even if it be conceded that, for an instant, there was a continuous column of water from the bucket to the cross-beam, which is also improbable. And it seems still more improbable that the electricity would travel to plaintiff through a column of aqueous atmosphere, created by the agency of the water thrown toward the beam. The injuries found upon the plaintiff’s body are as well explained as bruises suffered in consequence of his fall as electric burns.