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
- 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.
- 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.