Experienced Legal Counsel

This case involved a law suit filed by the surviving spouse of an excavation contractor who was killed when the trench in which he was working collapsed on top of him while he was installing drainage pipe for high school athletic field. The suit, a wrongful death action against, was filed against the school district, its architect, and others including the supplies of the pipe. After denying spouse’s motion to expand scope of discovery, the Superior Court, Law Division, granted the school district’s motion for summary judgment. The plaintiff spouse appealed. The Superior Court, Appellate Division, reversed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment, but affirmed order denying discovery.

The Supreme Court granted petitions for certification filed by all defendants. In modifying the Appellate Division’s decision, the Supreme Court held that: (1) the plaintiff spouse failed to establish that either district or architect breached a duty of care by failing to supervise contractor’s company’s means and methods of excavating and laying piping in the trench; (2) the plaintiff spouse was entitled to attempt to discover evidence concerning related construction projects involving the school district and the architect that possibly had a bearing on the architect’s and district’s general supervisory responsibilities on construction projects; (3) evidence would support a finding that the school district’s failure to supply the correct pipe to the contractor breached both school district’s contractual duty and its duty of care to provide pipe specified in the architect’s drawings that would have diminished significantly the contractor’s risk of harm; and (4) the evidence would support finding that district’s failure to supply the contractor with a complete set of correct pipe was a proximate cause of the contractor’s death.

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Accordingly the Appellate Division’s was affirmed as modified and the case was remanded to the trial court for additional discovery. After the additional discovery was completed, John King for the architect refiled a motion summary judgment .on the basis that the additional discovery failed to reveal any evidence that the architect exercised any control or supervision over the contractor.

This case involved a wrongful death action brought the surviving spouse of an excavation contractor against the school board and the architect after the excavation contractor was crushed the death when the trench in which he was laying pipe for the school’s scoreboard collapsed. The Superior Court, Law Division, Hunterdon County, entered summary judgment for defendants for the architect finding the architect owed no duty to the excavation contractor because the architect had no job site supervision responsibility. The surviving spouse appealed the dismissal. The Superior Court, Appellate Division, held that: (1) whether school board and architect had viable comparative negligence claim was separate from the issue of whether they had duty of care to excavation contractor; (2) a genuine issues of material fact as to degree of control and supervision, role in supply of uncorrugated drainage pipe, and opportunity and capacity to take corrective measures or warn the excavation contractor to brace trench precluded summary judgment; and (3) the collapse of the trench was foreseeable. The decision of the trial court was affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded to the trial court for further discovery.