## Facts

- Ciro A. Iandiorio, an 18-year-old attendant at a Mobil gas station, worked while the premises were being remodeled into a convenience store.
- Kriss & Senko Enterprises, Inc. served as the remodeling contractor and directed its employees to take breaks and smoke only in a designated area inside the station building.
- During his shift, Iandiorio spilled gasoline on himself, leaving his clothing soaked.
- Iandiorio entered the building and told a Kriss & Senko employee that his clothes were gasoline-soaked.
- A Kriss & Senko employee, standing a few feet from Iandiorio in the designated smoking area and aware of the gasoline-soaked clothing, struck a match to light a cigarette.
- The gasoline ignited, causing Iandiorio severe burn injuries.

## Issues

1. Whether a contractor that designates and controls a specific smoking area for employees owes a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent foreseeable harm to third parties injured by employee smoking in that area.
2. Whether the evidence was sufficient to submit negligence (duty, breach, and causation) to the jury, making a compulsory nonsuit improper.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed the entry of compulsory nonsuit and remanded.
- The Court held that the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to Iandiorio, was sufficient for a jury to find a duty and potential liability based on the contractor’s control over employee smoking and the foreseeability of ignition.
- The Court ruled that the lower courts erred by deciding the negligence questions as a matter of law rather than allowing the jury to resolve them.

## Legal Principles

- An employer who affirmatively regulates and controls an aspect of employee conduct (such as the time and place of smoking) may have a duty to use reasonable care to prevent foreseeable harm to third parties arising from that controlled activity.
- Restatement (Second) of Torts § 317 supports liability where the employer has the ability and opportunity to control an employee’s conduct and knows or has reason to know control is necessary to prevent harm.
- Foreseeability of harm informs the existence and scope of duty; where reasonable minds may differ on duty, breach, or causation, those issues are generally for the jury.
- Compulsory nonsuit is proper only when, taking the plaintiff’s evidence and reasonable inferences as true, the plaintiff fails to establish a prima facie case.

## Conclusion

Because Kriss & Senko confined employee smoking to a designated area and an employee allegedly ignited gasoline-soaked clothing despite knowledge of the danger, the record permitted a jury to find negligence under a duty-to-control theory; removing the case from the jury by compulsory nonsuit was error.


Iandiorio v. Kriss & Senko Enters., Inc., 512 Pa. 392, 517 A.2d 530 (Pa. 1986)