MONTGOMERY, Ala. (Legal Newsline) - There was no evidence to support a judge’s $3 million verdict against a manufacturing executive accused of removing a safety gate from a plastics-extruding machine, leading to the death of a worker, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled.
The state’s high court also declined to extend the meaning of “remove” to include giving workers instructions to bypass safety devices. The argument was particularly inappropriate in this case because the defendant ceased working at the factory years before the woman killed in the accident was hired and trained, the Supreme Court noted.
Catalina Estillado was killed in 2017 at ABC Polymer’s factory in Helena, Ala., when she was apparently pulled into a machine that produces polypropylene fiber. Her spouse, Crescencio Pablo, sued William Durall, ABC’s former chief operating officer, and Dean Leader, another executive, for wrongful death. A Jefferson County judge awarded Pablo $3 million in damages.
Leader avoided the judgment by declaring bankruptcy but Durall appealed, and the Alabama Supreme Court reversed in an Aug. 30 decision written by Justice Brady Mendheim.
The fatal machine had been produced by Faré S.p.A. in Italy in 1989 and moved among several owners before winding up in Alabama. At some point, the safety gate had been removed, but Durall presented evidence showing he had received a full set of engineering documents that did not include any mention of the missing gate. The gate was supposed to be connected to a switch that slowed down the production line when it was open.
While the Alabama Supreme Court has found managers can be sued for removing or failing to install safety devices, the plaintiff failed to provide any evidence suggesting Durall removed the gate or that he should have known it was missing.
The circuit court relied upon Bailey v. Hogg, a 1989 Alabama Supreme Court decision where a concrete manufacturer bought a used machine and a supervisor failed to install a safety guard that came with it. In that case, the Alabama Supreme Court overturned summary judgment for the supervisor, ruling that a state law penalizing the removal of a guard equally applied when someone fails to install one.
“The evidence does not indicate that Durall willfully and intentionally failed to install an available safety guard,” the Supreme Court said in Durall’s case.
The court also declined to extend the definition of “bypassing” a safety advice to include instructing employees to operate a machine in an unsafe manner. The plaintiff’s argument was irrelevant since Durall had left the company years before Estillado was hired and trained, the court observed.