APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS, FIRST DISTRICT, SECOND DIVISION
Company et al., Defendants and
Counterdefendants-Appellees; McDonough
Plumbing & Heating, Inc., d/b/a
McDonough Mechanical Service
Company, Third-Party, Defendant-Appellant)
515 N.E.2d 157, 161 Ill. App. 3d 518, 113 Ill. Dec. 348
Appeal from the Circuit Court of Cook County; the Hon. Thomas P. Cawley, Judge, presiding.
Rehearing denied October 27, 1987 1987.IL.1343
JUSTICE HARTMAN delivered the opinion of the court. SCARIANO, P.J., and STAMOS, J., concur.
DECISION OF THE COURT DELIVERED BY THE HONORABLE JUDGE HARTMAN
The issues presented on appeal include whether: (1) the circuit court erred in dismissing defendants and counterdefendants Carp and North Shore after finding that they had entered into a good-faith settlement with plaintiffs; (2) the circuit court erred in admitting evidence of the size of Duo-Fast's plant; (3) Duo-Fast was entitled to a directed verdict or judgment n.o.v. on plaintiffs' asserted failure to prove Duo-Fast's negligence or violation of the Structural Work Act as the proximate cause of McKanna's death; (4) McKanna's accident was covered by the Structural Work Act; and (5) the circuit court erred in allowing plaintiffs' expert to testify.
On October 17, 1980, McKanna, a pipefitter for 38 years then employed by third-party defendant McDonough Plumbing and Heating, Inc. (McDonough), and his partner, Robert Wollard, Jr., went to the Duo-Fast plant to perform warranty repair work on the air-conditioning system. The system upon which the men worked was installed partly within the building and partly upon its roof. The condensing units located on the roof were accessible via two routes: by a permanently affixed wall ladder which ran 17 feet from the floor of the boiler room to a ceiling hatch giving access to the roof; or by a combination stairway and ladder from the compressor room. The boiler room ladder, consisting of 17 steel rungs, mounted 12 inches apart, and 5 inches from the wall, possessed several alleged defects: (1) the rungs were set too close to the wall (5 inches rather than 7 inches) according to American National Safety Institute standards adopted by OSHA; (2) an I-beam near the top of the ladder violated ANSI/OSHA standards and interfered with placement of a user's foot on the second and fourth rungs from the top of the ladder; (3) the steel rungs of the ladder did not have a nonskid surface but were merely ...