The Oil Pipeline

The Defendant was employed by the Pacific & Arctic Railway as roadmaster of the White Pass & Yukon Railroad, which runs between Skagway, Alaska, and Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. His employment contract made him "responsible for every detail of the safe and efficient maintenance and construction of track, structures and marine facilities of the entire railroad" and required him to "assume similar duties with special projects." One such project under the Defendant's supervision was a rock-quarrying operation at a site called "6-mile," located on an embankment 200 feet above the Skagway River. The project involved blasting rock from outcroppings and loading it onto railroad cars with a backhoe. A petroleum pipeline ran alongside the railroad in the work area; near the work platform the pipeline was covered by only a few inches of soil. The Defendant did not arrange for the pipeline to be adequately protected during the blasting and quarrying work. One evening, a backhoe operator, trying to sweep fallen rocks from the tracks, struck the unprotected pipeline with his backhoe bucket. The pipeline ruptured. Between 1,000 and 5,000 gallons of heating oil discharged into the Skagway River, a navigable waterway, over the course of many days.