Article

Explosion case defused

Appeals court dismisses duty-to-inspect claim against gas company

On April 28, the Illinois Court of Appeals for the Second District dismissed a natural gas utility in a 2002 rental home explosion that seriously injured a mother and her teenage daughter.

The plaintiffs claimed that the gas company failed to thoroughly inspect the gas piping in the basement and warn the plaintiffs of any risk posed by the condition of the piping. Before the date of the explosion, the plaintiffs neither detected nor alerted the gas company of a possible leak. However, the plaintiffs claimed that the gas company received constructive notice of a problem in the piping when a gas company employee was at the premises 17 months before the explosion.

Prior to the explosion
On the night before the explosion, the teenage tenant detected a faint odor when she walked into the home, but she did not identify it as natural gas because she was not familiar with the odor. The next morning, the mother awoke at 6:30 and smelled what she thought was natural gas. The mother knew that leaking natural gas could create a risk of fire or an explosion.

Still, the mother and daughter descended the basement stairs to find the leak. In the southwest corner of the basement, the mother heard and saw a broken pipe in the ceiling above a bed. The breach in the pipe appeared to be at a connection point in the pipe. They decided to leave the home immediately. As they were heading to the stairs, the mother dialed “9” on her phone and the explosion occurred.

Seventeen months before the accident, a gas company employee had responded to the home because the tenant claimed she had no gas or hot water. The employee determined that the gas meter was stuck and would not send gas to the home. He turned off the gas service, replaced the meter, reactivated the gas service and went inside to relight the pilot lights on the gas-fueled appliances.

The court of appeals affirmed the trial-court dismissal of the case, finding that the gas company had no duty to inspect the interior gas piping because it did not install, own or have any control over the interior pipes or fixtures on the plaintiffs’ premises. The company was not responsible for the condition of the plaintiffs’ interior pipes or fixtures. The company never received a report of a gas leak at the plaintiffs’ premises. The company had no actual notice of a defect in the plaintiffs’ interior pipes or fixtures.

The court concluded that the mere presence of the gas company employee in the plaintiffs’ basement some 17 months before the loss did not provide notice of the problem with the subsequently broken pipe, nor did it create a duty to inspect the interior piping in the basement. The court also concluded that the gas company did not owe the plaintiffs a duty of care to inspect the premises, because the explosion was not reasonably foreseeable.

Degree of care, to a degree
The court acknowledged that a gas company must exercise the requisite degree of care so that no injury occurs in the distribution of gas while it is under the company’s control, but such responsibility is limited to when the gas is in the company’s own pipes. In the absence of notice of defects, it is not incumbent upon a gas company to exercise reasonable care to ascertain whether service pipes under the control of the property owner or consumer are fit for furnishing gas.

Here, where the gas company did not install the pipes or fixtures on the customer’s premises, did not own them and had no control over them, the company is not responsible for their condition or for their maintenance. Therefore, the gas company is not liable for injuries caused by a leak in that piping of which the gas company had no knowledge.

Although this is a case involving a natural gas utility, it is very instructive for the propane industry. It stands for the general rule of common law that the part of the gas system that is installed, owned and controlled by someone other than the gas company can’t be the legal duty of the gas company to maintain, absent actual notice of a leak in the system.