PORTLAND, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments on Thursday in an appeal stemming from the construction of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge.
Vera Dyer and her sons Paul and Robert Dyer are appealing a summary judgment in favor of Maine Drilling and Blasting in Superior Court. The Dyers had claimed that blasting that the company had done in connection with the construction of the bridge had damaged Vera Dyer’s home adjacent to the construction site.
The Dyers had argued that the 100 or more blasts conducted by Maine Drilling and Blasting had caused damage to the home and standalone garage next to it. According to court documents, the Dyers claimed that the blasts had created new cracks in the basement, a widening of existing cracks in both the basement and garage and that they had displaced a retaining wall.
The original suit was filed in February 2007, and in July the company moved for a summary judgment. Justice Jeffery Hjelm granted the motion and ruled in favor of Maine Drilling and Blasting.
Justice Hjelm ruled that Maine law did consider blasting an activity that leads to liability; that the plaintiffs had failed to provide evidence proving a link between the blasting and the damage and he rejected their reliance on the legal argument of res ipsa loquitor which holds that the alleged damage could not have occurred unless there had been negligence.
In briefs filed with the court, the Dyers claim that the Superior Court erred in its rulings and that it did not view evidence provided by the Dyers and from an engineer in a light most favorable to the plaintiffs, including the evidence that six of the blasts had exceeded established safety standards.
They also argued that cases in both Maine and federal courts allow for strict liability to be imposed on defendants who have conducted “abnormally dangerous activities.” They further stated that the case law relied upon by the Superior Court was outdated and no longer supportable and urged the law court to overrule that line of cases and to hold that “… an actor who conducts an abnormally dangerous activity, like Defendant’s blasting in this case, is subject to strict liability.”
Attorneys for Maine Drilling and Blasting, however, argued in preliminary briefs that the state Legislature has set strict liability requirements on specific activities, but has declined to extend those provisions to blasting operations. The court, they said, “… should exercise appropriate judicial restraint and decline to expand or adopt a new theory of liability that the Legislature has declined to impose.”
They further argued that the court had ruled correctly in granting the summary judgment, noting that the plaintiff’s engineer had admitted that he could not give an opinion on the cause of the damage. They also stated that the blasting did not reach the level required to crack aged concrete.
They also argued that the cases cited by the Dyers to establish liability did not establish a precedent.