Case Law Summaries

Laidlow v. Hariton Machinery Co., Inc.

• Opinion Date: February 25, 2002
• Business Law
• E-Mail

WORKERS COMPENSATION — An employer’s deliberate and deceptive disconnection of a machine safety device can constitute a “deliberate wrong,” which may take a claim outside of the workers compensation bar.

An employee “suffered a serious injury when his hand was caught in a rolling mill being operated without a safety nip guard.” The machine actually had a safety guard but it was never engaged during normal operation. The only time it was engaged was when OSHA inspectors came to the plant. The injured employee had operated the machine in that condition for twelve to thirteen years without reported injuries, although there were a number of close calls. His employer conceded that the guard was removed “for speed and convenience.” The employee sued on an intentional wrong theory. Intentional wrongs are excluded from the workers’ compensation bar and would permit the worker to claim damages directly from his employer. The Appellate Division concluded that there was no evidence of an intentional wrong, relying on “the lack of any accident over a twelve -year period… .” It also “determined that OSHA violations alone, in the absence of proof of deliberate intent to injure, would not satisfy the intentional wrong standard.” On further appeal, the New Jersey Supreme Court was required to determine what categories of employer conduct would be sufficient flagrant so as to constitute an intentional wrong. An earlier Appellate Division case had held “that removal of a safety guard can meet the intentional wrong standard and that such a determination requires a case-by-case analysis.” Consequently, the Supreme Court concluded that summary judgment should have been denied to the employer and the case should have been sent to a jury on an issue of substantial certainty. In its view, “[a] reasonable jury could conclude, in light of all of the surrounding circumstances, including the prior close-calls, the seriousness of any potential injury that could occur, [the injured employee’s] complaints about the absent guard, and the guilty knowledge of [the employer] as revealed by a deliberate and systematic deception of OSHA, that [the employer] knew that it was substantially certain that a removal of the safety guard would result eventually in injury to one of its employees, the absence of prior accidents notwithstanding.” Although the Supreme Court believed that “the Legislature would never consider such actions or injury to constitute simple facts of industrial life qualifying them for immunity under the Workers’ Compensation Act,” it held nonetheless that “[r]emoval of a safety guard by an employer, ..., does not establish a per se intentional wrong: An analysis of the totality of the circumstances is required.”

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