Supplier of electricity owes highest duty of care to man who drowned after his helicopter struck power lines

Law Reporter, Jun 2000

Nanninga v. Three Rivers Elec. Coop., 203 F.34 329 8th Cir. 2000).

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a supplier of electricity owed the highest duty of care to a man who drowned after his helicopter struck power lines, even though electricity was not the cause of death.

Here, Nanninga drowned after his helicopter struck a set of power lines strung over a river. His survivors filed a wrongful death suit against the company that owned the lines. The trial court entered judgment for defendant after a jury verdict. Plaintiffs appealed, arguing that the trial court erred in instructing the jury that defendant owed Nanninga a duty of ordinary care.

Reversing, the Eighth Circuit noted that, in Missouri, a supplier of electricity must exercise the highest degree of care to prevent injuries it can reasonably anticipate. The supplier can still be liable even if it does not anticipate the exact injury or the manner in which it came about. Nevertheless, the court explained, the trial court determined that a duty of ordinary care applied in this case because the accident did not involve the inherently dangerous properties of electricity, since Nanninga drowned.

Disagreeing, the court said that when an individual is killed as a result of contact with electrified wires, it defies common sense to later determine the nature of the duty owed solely on the basis of the precise manner of death. In addition, the court found, leaving the applicable standard of care to be sorted out after an accident occurs would diminish the law's ability to promote safe behavior and would thus at least partially circumvent the purposes of Missouri's law of negligence. Moreover, such a rule is inconsistent with the rule that suppliers of electricity must exercise the highest degree of care even when the exact injury or manner in which it came about is unforeseeable.

The court also distinguished case law in which courts refused to apply the highest degree of care standard. In those cases, the court emphasized, injury by electricity was not possible because the wires involved in the accident did not carry electrical current. Here, by contrast, the power lines involved in the helicopter crash carried electrical current. The court said the fact that other courts have applied a lower standard of care in cases in which injury by electricity was not even possible did not persuade it that the highest standard of care is inapplicable where electricity could have-but did not--cause injury.

Accordingly, the court remanded.

Plaintiffs' Counsel

*Bryson R, Cloon, Overland Park, Kan.

Jon A. Blongewicz, Overland Park, Kan.