TOPEKA, Kan. (Legal Newsline) - The heirs of a man who was smothered under tons of grain and won more than $12 million in arbitration can also sue the manufacturer of the vacuum he was using, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled, declining to apply the state’s “one-action” rule barring multiple lawsuits over the same accident.
In an advisory opinion to the federal court in Kansas, the state’s highest court said arbitration doesn’t qualify as a “judicial determination of comparative fault” required for the one-action rule to kick in. The rule doesn’t appear in the Kansas statute books, but was created by judges to reduce duplicative lawsuits by requiring plaintiffs to name everyone who might have liability in a single lawsuit.
Timothy Hunt was removing grain from a trailer on the Butts Farms in Mulvane, Kansas in 2019 when he became trapped in the corn and slowly buried until his chest was compressed and he couldn’t breathe. His daughter Regan sued Walinga USA, the vacuum manufacturer, in federal court in Kansas but also entered into arbitration with Butts Farms, agreeing to apply Kansas law.
The arbitrator ruled for the Hodges family in 2021, finding the farm failed to protect the man by allowing him to operate the vacuum alone without a safety harness or a shutoff valve on the device. The arbitrator awarded $5 million for Hodges’ pain and suffering, $7 million for economic damages and $250,000 for bereavement and loss of companionship.
A Missouri court approved the arbitration award in a judgment. Walinga then moved to dismiss the case against it, saying the arbitration award and judgement ended the lawsuit against it under the state’s one-action rule. The federal court certified the question to the Kansas Supreme Court, which disagreed in a July 21 decision.
Kansas in 1974 changed from the common law to a statutory scheme for determining comparative fault, including a requirement that in wrongful death actions, the defendant can require additional parties to be named. Courts shaped that into the one-action rule requiring all defendants to be sued in a single action, regardless of the claims.
The Kansas Supreme Court went on to apply the rule in car accident cases, prohibiting plaintiffs from first suing the driver of the other car, then trying to sue the manufacturer in a second action. But the court moderated the rule, allowing an employee barred from suing his employer under the workers compensation law to sue others outside of that action. The court also carved out exceptions for cases where the plaintiff settles against one defendant but continues to sue others and a case involving a minor who settled.
In this case, the judgment confirming the arbitration award was similar to an order confirming a settlement, the court ruled. It doesn’t take the place of an actual trial where the relative liability of each defendant has been determined.
“In the absence of `a judicial determination of comparative fault,’ a plaintiff may pursue separate actions against tortfeasors,” the Supreme Court concluded.