Court: Determining Responsibility for Concealed Hazard Not Suited for Summary Judgment

Whether a subcontractor hired to line a pit with concrete was responsible for assessing the safety of the excavation work performed by the hiring party is a question of fact that precludes summary judgment, a California appeals court ruled in an unpublished decision. The owner of De Jong's Dover Dairy LLC excavated a pit and hired Supreme Construction Inc. to pour and install concrete walls. Supreme employee Luis Felipe Diaz Ornelas was injured when the trench walls collapsed while he was working inside the pit. Ornelas sued the dairy. He introduced the opinion of a civil and geotechnic...