“‘[O]ne who owes, and is personally bound to perform, an absolute and positive duty to the public or an individual cannot escape the responsibility of seeing that duty performed by delegating it to an independent contractor, and will be liable for injuries resulting from the contractor’s negligence in the performance thereof, whether the duty is imposed by law or by contract....”
How later courts described this case
- “‘[O]ne who owes, and is personally bound to perform, an absolute and positive duty to the public or an individual cannot escape the responsibility of seeing that duty performed by delegating it to an independent contractor, and will be liable for injuries resulting from the contractor’s negligence in the performance thereof, whether the duty is imposed by law or by contract....”
- involving damages for wrongful death after a young roofer fell from a roof under construction
- reducing a $75,000 award to a seventeen-year-old boy’s estate to $50,000
- “where a contract imposes a duty ... neglect of that duty is a tort and an action ex delicto will lie”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Abrogated on other grounds by Van Fossen v. MidAmerican Energy Co., 2009 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 119 (2009)
147 N.W.2d 824, 828 (Iowa 1967) (emphasis added), abrogated in part on other grounds by, Van Fossen, 777 N.W.2d at 695
The opinion
Becker, J.
I concur in all divisions except Division XX. My views on ordering remittiturs are set forth in a dissent in Hurtig v. Bjork, 258 Iowa 155, 165 , 138 N.W.2d 62 .