FRANKFORT, Ky. (Legal Newsline) - A woman who was raped by a young man at a home for troubled youth can’t sue the organization because she already collected money through the workers’ compensation system, a Kentucky appeals court ruled.
Without deciding the full meaning of the state statute providing compensation for injured workers, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled that Adrienne Howell failed to show Father Maloney’s Boys and Girls Haven had deliberately intended for her to be harmed.
Howell sued the home after she was choked unconscious and raped by Robert Brown Lester, a resident at the school. Howell worked as an equine specialist and Lester had a permit to work with her at the barn even though he was known to be violent.
Howell obtained benefits under the Kentucky Workers’ Compensation Act, which like most state workers’ comp statutes, provides the exclusive remedy for work-related injuries. Howell then sued Father Maloney’s, arguing the statute has an exception for employers who cause injuries with “deliberate intention.”
Howell claimed she wasn’t trained properly on self-defense and the youth home knew she would be in danger if she was left alone with Lester. The trial court dismissed her case, saying the exception doesn’t exist. The appeals court upheld the dismissal, but declined to determine whether the exception exists, instead ruling Howell failed to support her claim of deliberate intention.
Employers who cause an appreciable risk of injury to their workers might even be considered reckless or wanton, the appeals court said, “but it is not an intentional wrong.” The court cited a Kentucky Supreme Court ruling that deliberate intention did not exist when a worker died of asphyxia after walls of a tunnel collapsed on him, even though his employer had failed to provide required protective supports.