United States Seventh Circuit

In plaintiff's tort case against defendant-general contractors arising from an injury sustained while working on renovation of Soldier Field, district court's failure to give a joint control instruction to the jury was a harmless error and the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is a red herring in this case as the question is not whether and in what sense defendant controlled the scaffold, but whether it failed to make a timely inspection of it. Here, this was a reasonable delegation of responsibility to the subcontractor, and so the general contractor did not breach its duty of care by not checking all the scaffolds when they were first assembled.

Appellate Information

• Argued 06/02/2009
• Decided 09/30/2009
• Published 09/30/2009

Judges

• POSNER, Circuit Judge., Before POSNER, RIPPLE, and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Seventh Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Milo W. Lundblad (argued), Brustin & Lundblad, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.


• For Appellees:
  
• Jenna L. Schoeneman, Byron D. Knight (argued), Knight, Hoppe, Kurnik & Knight, Des Plaines, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.