Virginia’s High-Voltage Line Safety Exemption Covers Work on Communications-Tower Supports

1. Introduction

The Supreme Court of Virginia held that the exemption in Virginia’s Overhead High Voltage Line Safety Act (“OHVLSA”), Code § 59.1-413, covers contractors’ work on the supporting foundations of a communications tower, even though the nearby electrical line involved in a fatal accident was unrelated to that tower. The exemption is not confined to work on overhead high-voltage electrical lines themselves.

The dispute arose after Kelvin Finck, an employee of Dietzel Enterprises, Inc., was electrocuted while working on a communications-tower project. A&N Electric Cooperative owned the overhead electrical line that caused his injuries. After settling the estate’s negligence action, A&N, acting through its insurer, sought statutory indemnification from Dietzel and the project’s general contractor, Allstate Towers, Inc.

The Fourth Circuit certified two questions: whether the statutory exemption covered the contractors’ work, and whether statutory indemnification required a prior finding of liability against A&N. The Supreme Court answered the first question affirmatively and deemed the second moot. Its central contribution is therefore an authoritative interpretation of the exemption’s scope—not a ruling on whether settlements qualify for indemnification under the Act.

2. Background and Statutory Framework

The accident and underlying litigation

In 2019, Accomack County undertook a project to install new supporting foundations for guy wires stabilizing a communications tower. The County retained Allstate as general contractor, and Allstate subcontracted the drilling work to Dietzel. During that work, Finck walked a steel cable into an overhead high-voltage line located within ten feet of the drilling site. He died several days later.

A&N’s electrical line was neither connected nor related to the communications tower. Neither contractor was working on that line or another overhead power line connected to the tower. This separation between the structure being worked on and the electrical hazard became central to the statutory dispute.

Finck’s estate sued A&N, Allstate, and Dietzel, alleging inadequate electrocution precautions and violations of the OHVLSA. Dietzel was dismissed under the exclusivity provision of the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Act. Allstate settled before trial. The estate’s case against A&N proceeded to trial but settled before a verdict, with A&N’s insurer, Federated Rural Electric Management Corp., paying $800,000 on A&N’s behalf.

The Act’s safety duties and indemnification remedy

The OHVLSA regulates work near overhead high-voltage lines. Subject to its conditions and exemptions, a person responsible for work within ten feet of such a line must notify its owner or operator and negotiate appropriate safety measures. The statutory definition quoted in the opinion generally concerns above-ground electrical conductors exceeding 600 volts, subject to specified exclusions.

Code § 59.1-414(B) requires a person responsible for work who violates the Act’s safety requirements to indemnify the line’s owner or operator for qualifying costs arising from injuries resulting from that violation. Federated, proceeding as A&N’s subrogee under Code § 38.2-207, invoked this provision to seek reimbursement from Allstate and Dietzel.

The exemption

Code § 59.1-413 excludes specified work involving:

“overhead electrical or communication circuits or conductors and their supporting structures and associated equipment”

belonging to enumerated systems: rail transportation systems; electrical generating, transmission, or distribution systems; communication systems, including cable television; and other publicly or privately owned systems. The statutory language also addresses performance by the system owner’s or operator’s employees or independent contractors engaged on its behalf.

The dispute concerned whether this language reaches a communications tower and its supporting foundations, or instead protects only work on overhead electrical lines and their associated structures.

The federal proceedings

The federal district court dismissed A&N’s indemnification complaint because the contractors’ work fell within the exemption. It did not decide their alternative contention that indemnification required a prior liability finding against A&N. On appeal, the Fourth Circuit certified both questions to the Supreme Court of Virginia under Article VI, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution and Rule 5:40.

3. Summary of the Opinion

The Court treated the tower as an overhead communication conductor forming part of a communication system. The guy-wire foundations were its supporting structures. Allstate and Dietzel performed the work as contractors acting on behalf of the publicly owned system’s owner, Accomack County.

Importantly, the Supreme Court answered questions of Virginia law; it did not itself enter a federal judgment affirming the dismissal. Its answers resolve the state-law issues for application by the federal court.

4. Analysis of the Court’s Legal Reasoning

A. The Court began with statutory text, not a general preference for safety regulation

The Court reviewed the statutory questions de novo, independently determining their meaning. Because the case arose from dismissal of a complaint, it accepted the pleaded facts and relevant attachments as true for purposes of answering the certified questions. Those allegations were not findings following a trial.

The governing interpretive approach was conventional but decisive: give effect to legislative intent through the statute’s ordinary language unless that language is ambiguous or produces an absurd result. The Court would not add limitations merely because a narrower exemption might advance a desirable safety policy.

B. A communications tower qualified as a communication conductor

The Act did not define the disputed terms, so the Court consulted general-purpose dictionaries. It understood “communication” as imparting or transmitting, “circuit” as the complete path of an electric current, and “conductor” as a substance or body capable of transmitting electricity, heat, or sound.

Applying those definitions, the Court treated the communications tower as a communication conductor. Its guy-wire foundations were supporting structures within the statutory language. The relevant work therefore did not have to involve the electrical line that caused the injury.

The Court also assumed that the tower was “overhead” because it stood above ground. That point was uncontested, making it an assumption used to decide this case rather than a comprehensive adjudication of every possible meaning of “overhead.”

C. The connection to an enumerated system remained essential

The exemption does not end with the words “circuits or conductors.” Those objects and their supports must be “of” one of the listed systems. The Court defined a system as devices or objects forming a network or serving a common purpose.

The tower satisfied the communication-system category because it connected devices for the common purpose of communicating. The Court also found support in the publicly or privately owned system category: Accomack County owned the tower, and Allstate and Dietzel worked as independent contractors on the County’s behalf.

The Court’s application can therefore be expressed as a chain:

Drilling work → supporting foundations → overhead communication conductor → qualifying system → work undertaken for the system owner.

This structure matters. Public ownership or proximity to a power line, standing alone, does not establish the exemption.

D. The surplusage argument failed because the statute contains cumulative qualifications

A&N argued that treating the tower as a communication conductor made the later reference to a “communication system” redundant. The Court disagreed: the first phrase identifies the relevant object; the second identifies the network or system to which it belongs.

A structure might qualify as a communication conductor without being connected to a larger communication system. The system requirement therefore performs independent limiting work. Similarly, the reference to electrical generating, transmission, or distribution systems can include communication devices serving those systems—not merely electrical devices.

The Court also observed that A&N’s narrower construction could itself produce redundancy. If the exemption covered only overhead high-voltage lines, those lines would already ordinarily serve electrical generation, transmission, or distribution functions.

E. Reading the Act as a whole supported a broader exemption

A&N relied on the Act’s definition of an overhead high-voltage line as a type of conductor. The Court identified the logical flaw: although an overhead line is a conductor, not every conductor is an overhead high-voltage line.

The Act’s wording reinforced that distinction. Other provisions repeatedly use “line,” while the exemption uses “circuits or conductors” and expressly includes communication infrastructure. The Court presumed that this difference was deliberate.

The Court likewise rejected the proposed use of noscitur a sociis to treat “circuits” merely as a clarification of “conductors.” Related words may illuminate each other, but the canon did not justify collapsing distinct statutory terms or limiting them all to power lines.

The purpose provision also supported rejecting a line-work-only interpretation. The Act addresses work in the vicinity of high-voltage lines, not exclusively work performed on those lines. Its exemption can accordingly encompass nearby infrastructure work.

F. A broad exemption was not legally absurd

A&N contended that the Court’s interpretation would allow the exemption to swallow the rule. The Court applied a demanding definition of absurdity: an interpretation must make the statute internally inconsistent or incapable of operation, not merely broad or debatable as policy.

The Act remained operative because many activities would not satisfy the exemption. The Court identified ordinary tree trimming and ordinary construction on an individual building or residence as examples of work that does not, on that description, involve qualifying circuits or conductors belonging to an enumerated system.

Whether the exemption leaves too much hazardous work outside the Act is a legislative policy question. The judiciary could not narrow clear language to achieve its preferred regulatory balance.

G. Narrow construction could not override plain meaning

A&N’s final argument invoked the principle that exceptions to important protective legislation should be narrowly construed. The Court acknowledged that principle but denied it controlling force against unambiguous text.

The distinction is significant: narrow construction may assist in resolving uncertainty, but it does not authorize a court to remove conduct that the exemption plainly covers.

H. The indemnification issue became unnecessary to decide

Once the exemption applied, the contractors had no OHVLSA duty whose breach could trigger statutory indemnification. The question whether A&N first needed an adjudication of liability therefore had no practical effect on this dispute.

The opinion consequently establishes neither that settlements are recoverable under Code § 59.1-414(B) nor that they are excluded. That issue remains open for a case in which the Act applies.

5. Precedents Cited and Their Influence

The opinion was one of first impression concerning Code § 59.1-413. Its cited authorities principally supplied procedural rules and methods of statutory interpretation rather than an existing substantive answer about communications towers.

A. Certified-question procedure and pleaded facts

• Wyatt v. McDermott, 283 Va. 685, 689 (2012), supplied the approach to factual allegations when answering a certified question arising from dismissal. The Court accepted A&N’s allegations as true to formulate an answer responsive to the federal court’s needs. This confined the opinion to the pleaded setting rather than resolving disputed evidence.

• Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 118 (1990), appeared through Wyatt v. McDermott in support of that pleading-stage approach. Its role was procedural, not an analogy concerning electrical safety or indemnification.

• Cupp v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 305 Va. ___, 927 S.E.2d 794 (2026), served three functions. It explained that answering a certified question is an original determination of state law, not review of a lower court’s ruling; supported independent review of statutory questions; and cautioned against judicially creating categories or exceptions absent from the text. Its treatment of legislative policymaking also supported refusing to narrow the exemption on policy grounds.

B. Plain meaning and legislative intent

• Morgan v. Commonwealth, 301 Va. 476, 481–82 (2022), provided the principal statement that courts must ascertain and effectuate the General Assembly’s intent and follow plain statutory language unless ambiguity or absurdity requires otherwise.

• Farhoumand v. Commonwealth, 288 Va. 338, 343 (2014), was quoted through Morgan v. Commonwealth for the legislative-intent principle. It reinforced that the inquiry concerns the legislature’s enacted choices rather than a judicial preference about regulatory reach.

• Baker v. Commonwealth, 284 Va. 572, 576 (2012), likewise appeared through Morgan v. Commonwealth, supporting the rule that plain language binds unless ambiguous or productive of an absurd result. That rule framed the Court’s rejection of A&N’s narrowing arguments.

• Garofalo v. Di Vincenzo, 305 Va. ___, 926 S.E.2d 280, 285 (2026), supported using general-purpose dictionaries to establish ordinary meaning. It directly informed the analysis of “communication,” “circuit,” “conductor,” and “system.”

C. Structural interpretation and related-word canons

• Shoemaker v. Funkhouser, 299 Va. 471, 487 (2021), supplied the rule disfavoring interpretations that make statutory language useless or superfluous. The Court accepted that rule but concluded that “communication conductor” and “communication system” perform distinct functions.

• Cuccinelli v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 283 Va. 420, 430, 432 (2012), supported reading the legislative act as a whole and explained the related-words canon. Neither principle favored A&N: the broader Act distinguished “lines” from other conductors, while contextual association did not justify equating “circuits” and “conductors.”

• Zinone v. Lee's Crossing Homeowners Ass'n, 282 Va. 330, 337 (2011), established the presumption that differences in statutory wording are intentional. It was especially influential because the exemption omits “line,” a word repeatedly used elsewhere in the Act.

• Andrews v. Ring, 266 Va. 311, 319 (2003), was quoted through Cuccinelli v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va. for the proposition that doubtful words may be understood through associated words and phrases. The Court declined to extend that principle into a basis for erasing distinct meanings.

D. Absurdity, policy, and protective legislation

• City of Charlottesville v. Payne, 299 Va. 515, 532 (2021), defined an absurd statutory interpretation as one making the statute internally inconsistent or incapable of operation. Because the OHVLSA continued to govern substantial categories of work, the exemption’s breadth did not meet that standard.

• Daily Press, LLC v. Office of the Exec. Sec'y, 293 Va. 551, 557 (2017), quoted through Cupp v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., supported reserving public-policy choices to the General Assembly. It reinforced the separation between interpreting the exemption and revising its reach.

• Conyers v. Martial Arts World of Richmond, Inc., 273 Va. 96, 105 (2007), was A&N’s strongest authority for narrow construction. That decision narrowly construed exceptions to licensing requirements for children’s afterschool programs because protecting children was an objective of utmost importance. The Court distinguished its interpretive significance: Conyers v. Martial Arts World of Richmond, Inc. did not authorize contradicting an exemption’s plain language.

E. Federal proceedings and comparative authority

• A&N Electric Cooperative v. Dietzel Enterprises, Inc., 154 F.4th 202 (4th Cir. 2025), supplied the certification order and the questions requiring authoritative Virginia-law answers. It was the procedural vehicle for this opinion, not a prior binding interpretation of the exemption.

• A&N Elec. Coop. v. Dietzel Enters., Inc., No. 2:23-cv-0576, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 143331 (E.D. Va. July 18, 2024), was the district court decision underlying the appeal. It used dictionary definitions to conclude that a communications tower came within the exemption and declined to restrict that exemption to high-voltage-line work. The Supreme Court reached the same substantive interpretation independently.

• Entergy Tex., Inc. v. Woollen, No. 09-20-00297-cv, 2021 Tex. App. LEXIS 9131, at *16–17 (Tex. App. Nov. 10, 2021), appeared in a comparative-law footnote. Although numerous states have similar exemptions, the Court identified this decision as involving materially different facts. It did not adopt a Texas rule as the basis for its holding.

6. Impact and Limits

Broader protection for qualifying infrastructure work

The decision makes clear that exemption analysis focuses on the infrastructure being constructed or maintained, not solely on the electrical line creating the hazard. Communications infrastructure can qualify even when it has no connection to that line. Supporting work, including foundation drilling, can fall within the exemption without direct work on transmission equipment.

Consequences for statutory indemnification

Utilities and their insurers must address exemption status before relying on OHVLSA indemnification. A serious accident near a qualifying line does not itself establish a statutory reimbursement right. If the relevant work is exempt, alleged failures to provide the Act’s notice or negotiate its safety measures cannot supply the necessary statutory violation.

Future disputes will turn on infrastructure and system relationships

Likely factual issues include whether an object is a qualifying circuit or conductor, whether the work concerns its supports or associated equipment, whether it belongs to an enumerated system, and whether the work was undertaken through the relationship contemplated by the statute. A standalone object may present a different system question from the networked tower alleged here.

The opinion does not exempt every publicly owned project, every contractor working near electricity, or every structure containing communications equipment. Each statutory qualification remains relevant.

No general immunity from negligence or other safety duties

The holding concerns the OHVLSA’s requirements and indemnification mechanism. It does not establish compliance with every other applicable safety obligation or eliminate otherwise available common-law duties. Nor does it determine ultimate negligence liability for Finck’s death.

Legislative clarification remains possible

If the General Assembly considers the exemption too broad, it may revise the language. The Court’s analysis places that policy choice with the legislature rather than using protective purpose to rewrite the existing provision.

7. Complex Concepts Simplified

Certified question

A question of state law sent by another court to the state’s highest court for an authoritative answer. The referring court retains responsibility for resolving the case.

Indemnification

Shifting a covered financial loss from one party to another. Here, A&N’s insurer sought reimbursement of the $800,000 settlement payment.

Subrogation

An insurer’s ability, after paying a covered loss, to exercise its insured’s rights against another party. It does not create rights the insured did not have.

De novo review

Independent legal analysis without deference to another court’s interpretation.

Surplusage canon

The preference for giving each statutory phrase meaningful work rather than treating words as unnecessary repetition.

Whole-act interpretation

Reading a provision alongside the rest of the statute, including its definitions and differences in terminology.

Noscitur a sociis

The idea that a doubtful word can be understood through surrounding words. It is a contextual aid, not permission to disregard distinct language.

Absurdity doctrine

A narrow exception to ordinary textual interpretation. An unexpected or undesirable policy result is not enough; the Court required internal inconsistency or practical inoperability.

Mootness

The absence of a remaining issue that matters to resolving the dispute. Here, exemption made the separate liability-finding question unnecessary.

8. Conclusion

The opinion establishes that Code § 59.1-413 reaches qualifying communications infrastructure and its supporting structures, not merely overhead high-voltage electrical lines. On the pleaded facts, Allstate and Dietzel’s foundation work was exempt even though the fatal electrical line was unrelated to the tower.

The broader lesson is methodological: statutory purpose, narrow-construction principles, and policy concerns cannot override clear exemption language. The narrower practical lesson is equally important: exemption defeats the OHVLSA indemnification claim here, while the availability of indemnification following a settlement remains undecided.