WGOL
Listen Live
Local Weather
Russellville, AL
59°

Appeals court reverses judge's order, rules in favor of local business

A lawsuit filed by a former employee of Williams Manufacturing, Inc., was dismissed after the Alabama Supreme Court reversed Franklin County Circuit Judge Terry Dempsey in a ruling released last week.

Louis Hall is a former employee of Leisure Creations, whose parent company is Williams Manufacturing, Inc., in Russellville. Hall sued the company, along with Chris Williams, its owner, and Bobby Saarinen, the plant manager, after he was injured while on the job.

Hall's complaint stated he was operating a power saw at the plant in May of 2014 when he was injured. His lawsuit against the company was previously dismissed by Dempsey after attorneys for Williams Manufacturing argued that Hall's legal remedy should have been an action under the Alabama Workers' Compensation Act.

According to the Supreme Court of Alabama's legal opinion, dated September 1, 2017, Hall then amended his complaint to claim that Williams and Saarinen had “caused or allowed the removal of a guard from the saw made the basis of this suit” and “had failed to install a safety guard provided for the saw and had failed to replace the unguarded saw with a new guarded saw.”

Decatur attorney Steve Hammond, who represented the defendants along with Russellville attorney Brian Hamilton, filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that Hall could not sue Williams and Saarinen individually unless he could prove that they willfully caused Hall's injury.

Alabama Code Sec. 25-5-11(a) states: “If a party, other than the employer, is an employee of the same employer, the injured employee may bring an action against the person only for willful conduct which results in or proximately causes the injury.”

The code further defines willful conduct as: “The willful and intentional removal from a machine of a safety guard or safety device provided by the manufacturer of the machine with knowledge that injury or death would likely or probably result from the removal; provided, however, that removal of a guard or device shall not be willful conduct unless the removal did, in fact, increase the danger in the use of the machine and was not done for the purpose of repair of the machine or was not part of an improvement or modification of the machine which rendered the safety device unnecessary or ineffective.”

According to the court's opinion, Hall was operating a power saw manufactured by Kalamazoo Industries when he was injured. Hall used the saw to cut aluminum pipe. The saw was manufactured with a guard covering a portion of the blade, but Hall, according to court records, did not think the guard was adequate because it did not fully cover the blade when the saw had finished cutting and sprung back to the up position, when the blade would be exposed by about 1 ½ inches.

At Hall's request, someone at Williams Manufacturing installed an additional guard on the saw.

After Hall's injury, Williams replaced the saw with one manufactured by DeWalt. The facts showed that saw had been purchased and delivered at least a month before Hall's injury but had not been installed.

Hall alleged that he would not have been injured if he had been using the DeWalt saw and the failure to replace the saw was the basis for him suing Williams and Saarinen indivdually.

Dempsey denied the defendants' motion for summary judgment and the case was sent to the Supreme Court on an interlocutory appeal, meaning an appeal of a trial court ruling that is made before the trial itself has concluded. The question submitted to the Supreme Court was whether the presence of another saw on the premises that had not yet been installed and was not manufactured by the manufacturer of the saw in question was the legal equivalent of the removal of a safety guard under Alabama law, as argued by Hall.

The Supreme Court declined to extend the definition of willful conduct to include the facts at issue in Hall's case, ruling that the failure to install another, safer, saw manufactured by a different manufacturer than the saw that injured Hall was not the legal equivalent of the removal of a safety guard so as to constitute willful conduct under Alabama worker's compensation law.

The court also stated in its opinion that it was not making a legal conclusion as to whether “the failure to install an allegedly safer machine that is present on the premises and made by the same manufacturer as the machine that injured an employee might come within the definition of willful conduct.”

Williams told the Franklin Free Press that the worker's compensation portion of Hall's lawsuit had been settled, so once he and Saarinen were dismissed from the action, it was concluded.

comments powered by Disqus
Copyright © 2024 Franklin Free Press All Rights Reserved.
Designed and Hosted by RiverBender.com
113 Washington Ave. NW | Russellville, AL 35653 | 256-332-0255