The Worker’s Disability Compensation Act (“WDCA”) provides a nearly exclusive remedy for injuries sustained during an employee’s work. The only exception to this rule are for injuries that are intentionally caused by the employer. Ordinary and even gross negligence by an employer that results in injury will not be actionable beyond the WDCA.
Recently, the Michigan Court of Appeals in Shumaker v. Meritt Tool & Die & Eugene D. Miller, No. 336866, 2018 Mich App LEXIS 1610 (April 17, 2018), evaluated the elements necessary to prove an intentional tort. In that case, an employee lost three fingers when a 150-ton press was activated while he was working near an industrial machine. The employee alleged an intentional tort due to the employer’s failure to properly secure the foot pedal of the press and implement proper safety procedures. The employee argued that past accidents involving the press put the company on notice of the danger; a danger which also injured the employer’s son previously. Plaintiff alleged that these incidents, coupled with MIOSHA citations for failure to provide hand tools for repairing the press, were sufficient to maintain a claim of intentional tort against Defendant.
The court was unpersuaded, however, as it found that these prior incidents did not rise to the level of creating liability for intentional tort. It reasoned that to prove an intentional tort, the Plaintiff had to show that the employer committed a deliberate act with the specific intent to injure. In other words, “an employer must have made a conscious choice to injure an employee and have deliberately acted or failed to act in furtherance of that intent.” Id. at 5. It is not enough to be aware of conditions which may cause an injury and then fail to remedy those conditions. Therefore, the Court held that knowledge of the dangerous condition of the press and failure to remedy the danger were insufficient to prove an intentional tort by the employer.
This article was written by Nezar Habhab, Law Clerk.
