"Steel" Victorious: A Steel Mill Owner Is Not Liable to Former Employees Injured Six Years After the Owner Sold the Mill

Pennsylvania - Premises Liability

In the recent case of Gresik et al. v. Pa. Partners, LP, 2009 Pa Super. 253, 2009 Pa. Super. LEXIS 4984, the defendant PA Partners, L.P. ("PA Partners") owned a steel mill in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, from December 1983 until December 1988. PA Partners modified the mill to make steel ingots instead of steel wheels for railroad cars. PA Partners also reduced the size of the fire bricks inside the furnace and removed a layer of fire bricks from the bottom of the furnace.

Twice during PA Partners' ownership of the mill, molten steel "burned through" a firewall around the furnace. The escaping molten steel ruptured water lines and caused steam explosions in the mill. A worker escaped the second explosion by scrambling across an access drawbridge that connected the pouring platform between the furnaces. After the second accident, PA Partners removed the drawbridge in order to accommodate overhead cranes.

PA Partners sold the mill to Stonycreek Steel, Inc. ("Stonycreek") in December 1988. Stonycreek re-hired the management and workers who had worked in the mill for PA Partners from 1983 to 1988.

Six years later on June 8, 1994, another "burn through" occurred at the mill, with molten steel escaping a furnace, rupturing the water lines and causing a steam explosion. As a result, hot steel and debris fell onto the pouring platform where Gerald Livingston and Joseph Beltowski were standing. Livingston and Beltowski could not escape the explosion because PA Partners had removed the access drawbridge. Livingston died from his injuries and Beltowski was badly burned.

After many years of litigation, PA Partners was the only remaining defendant in the lawsuits of Beltowski and of Livingston's estate by his widow, Paula Gresik.

The trial courts granted PA Partners' Motion for Summary Judgment and dismissed all of Livingston/Gresik's and Beltowski's claims. Livingston/Gresik and Beltowski appealed to the Pennsylvania Superior Court and made the following arguments as to why PA Partners owed a duty, breached a duty and caused the accident of June 8, 1994:

• PA Partners did not tell Stonycreek that it had removed the access drawbridge;
• The removal of the access drawbridge created a danger to Livingston and Beltowski;
• The removal of the access drawbridge was a dangerous condition not likely to be discovered by Stonycreek;
• PA Partners had a general social duty not to harm others;
• Even if Stonycreek's employees knew of the danger of the access drawbridge being removed, that does not mean Stonycreek, the corporation, knew of the danger; and
• PA Partners was negligent in its training and instruction of its workforce.

The Superior Court disagreed with all of Livingston/Gresik's and Beltowski's arguments and dismissed the Appeal for the following reasons:

• The removal of the access drawbridge was well known to Stonycreek;
• PA Partners breached no general social duty not to harm others because the accident happened six years after PA Partners sold the mill to Stonycreek;
• PA Partners' employees and management remained working at the mill after PA Partners sold the mill to Stonycreek. The employees knew about the earlier "burn throughs," the removal of the access drawbridge and the danger of hot spots in the furnace becoming "burn throughs";
• Knowledge of the dangers in the mill by the employees of Stonycreek is knowledge of the dangers in the mill by Stonycreek itself, even if PA Partners did not directly tell Stonycreek of the dangerous condition in the mill at the time of the sale; and
• PA Partners had no reason to believe that Stonycreek would not discover the dangerous condition as Stonycreek retained PA Partners' hourly employees and management.

The key points are: PA Partners could expect that its former employees and management would tell Stonycreek about how the mill operated, what equipment needed to be repaired or refurbished, at what percentage of capacity the mill was producing, whether there were labor problems and whether there were any safety issues that needed to be addressed. Summary Judgment in favor of PA Partners was affirmed.

*Jim is an associate in the Casualty Department in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, office of Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin. Jim can be reached at (215) 575-2708 or jabosakowski@mdwcg.com.

Defense Digest, Vol. 16, No. 2, June 2010