Day on Torts
Where the decedent was an independent contractor who died when a lifting mechanism in the factory failed, there were questions of fact regarding whether the defendant company owed a duty to the decedent, so summary judgment for the defendant company was reversed.
In Lowe v. Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC, No. M2023-01774-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Nov. 21, 2024), the decedent was employed by Cumberland Machine Company and worked as a millwright. Cumberland and the defendant were separate entities, but Cumberland had a space inside the defendant’s plant, which is where the decedent worked. The decedent’s job included clearing clogged vent holes in 2,000+ pound tire molds. While flipping a mold pursuant to the defendant’s process, the mold fell onto the decedent, seriously injuring him. The decedent later died of his injuries.
The decedent’s wife filed this premises liability/wrongful death case against the defendant. The defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, asserting that it owed no duty to the decedent and that the plaintiff’s exclusive remedy was workers’ compensation. While the trial court denied summary judgment based on the workers’ compensation argument, it agreed that the defendant owed no duty to the decedent. On appeal, summary judgment based on the lack of duty was reversed.
A plaintiff asserting a negligence case must prove several elements, including that the defendant owed a duty of care to the injured person. In this case, the decedent was killed while working on clogs in tire molds. According to the plaintiff, the decedent was using a procedure mandated by the defendant. The defendant argued that there was no duty here based on Tennessee’s contractor exception, which provides that “no duty of care is owed by the landowner where the risks arise from, or are immediately connected with, defects of the premises or of machinery or appliances located thereon which the contractor has undertaken to repair.” (internal citation omitted). While the trial court agreed with the defendant, the Court of Appeals found that questions of material fact remained.
The Court wrote that “there [was] a dispute as to whether Decedent’s accident resulted from flaws in the tire mold, i.e., the subject of Decedent’s work, or from flaws in Bridgestone’s mandated process for lifting and turning those molds.” The Court noted that “[a]lthough subtle, this distinction is important because if Decedent’s injury was caused by the flawed rigging, the [contractor] exception would not apply.”
When determining whether a landowner has a duty to a contractor, a court must consider whether the landowner retained control of the premises and whether the accident was foreseeable. The Court reviewed testimony from the depositions in this case, finding that the defendant retained at least some control over the safety procedures in the shop area used by the decedent’s direct employer. Testimony showed that the defendant “could implement safety measures and require Cumberland to use those measures.” The evidence further showed that the defendant provided the lifting mechanism and protocol and that the defendant had changed the lifting protocol in other areas of the plant because a similar accident had occurred. Moreover, while defendant had performed safety inspections in other areas, it had not inspected this area.
Because of the evidence that defendant retained some control over the procedures and that there had been a similar accident before, the Court of Appeals found that genuine issues of material fact existed. Summary judgment based on a lack of duty was therefore reversed.
After affirming the denial of summary judgment based on the exclusivity of workers’ compensation, the Court of Appeals remanded this case to the trial court.
The Court of Appeals was correct in overturning summary judgment here. Anyone with a premises liability case involving the contractor exception should read this opinion.
This opinion was released three months after oral arguments.