Chaisson v. Henning

525 So. 2d 553, 1988 La. App. LEXIS 1116, 1988 WL 45663
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedMay 11, 1988
DocketNo. 87-330
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 525 So. 2d 553 (Chaisson v. Henning) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Chaisson v. Henning, 525 So. 2d 553, 1988 La. App. LEXIS 1116, 1988 WL 45663 (La. Ct. App. 1988).

Opinion

FORET, Judge.

Calvin Joseph Chaisson and Clint Randall Meche were injured while employees of [554]*554Glasscock Drilling Company. Plaintiffs filed separate lawsuits, now consolidated, asserting a cause of action for an alleged intentional tort. Defendants, Glasscock Drilling Co., their insurer, CNA Insurance Company, and Randy Henning, moved for summary judgment on the grounds that no genuine issue of fact existed as to whether the plaintiffs’ injuries were intentionally inflicted. The trial court granted summary judgment, without written reasons, in favor of Glasscock, CNA, and Randy Hen-ning.1

Plaintiffs, Chaisson and Meche, appeal from these two judgments. This appeal has been consolidated with Meche v. Henning, 525 So.2d 556 (La.App. 3 Cir.1988) which is also an action for an alleged intentional tort involving the same defendants, and in which a separate opinion is being rendered this date.

The issue before this Court is whether any genuine issue of material fact exists as to whether plaintiffs’ injuries were intentionally inflicted, thereby abrogating the immunity from tort liability ordinarily enjoyed by employers and co-employees for on-the-job accidents under La.R.S. 23:1032. We find that there is no genuine issue of fact material to the determination of whether the conduct of the defendants was intentional and affirm the trial court’s grant of both summary judgments.

PACTS

On the morning of September 12, 1979, Calvin Chaisson and Clint Meche, employees of Glasscock Drilling, were severely injured while working on the floor of a drilling rig. At the time of the injury, plaintiffs were pulling pipe out of the ground with a “traveling block” when the traveling block struck the seals of the “crown” above the drilling floor. A “traveling block” pulls, lifts, and pushes the drilling pipe in and out of the ground while the “crown” consists of wooden block seals located at the top of a drilling rig that protect the pulley system from being struck by the traveling block. Plaintiffs were injured when the traveling block struck the seals of the crown, breaking the wooden seals, causing wooden blocks to fall to the rig floor below.

More than three years after the accident, in September of 1979, Calvin Chaisson discovered that the “crown-o-matic” had not been set the morning of the accident. A “crown-o-matic” is a safety device installed on a drilling rig to prevent the traveling block from striking the crown.

Plaintiffs contend that the act of not setting the crown-o-matic was an intentional act and the cause-in-fact of plaintiffs’ injuries. Further, plaintiffs contend that the defendants intended to injure the plaintiffs or, in the alternative, that the defendants were substantially certain that injury would result from the failure to set the crown-o-matic.

MERITS

LSA-R.S. 23:1032, regarding an injured employee’s exclusive remedy under worker’s compensation law, states in pertinent part:

“The rights and remedies herein granted to an employee or his dependent on account of an injury, ... shall be exclusive of all other rights and remedies of such employee, ... against his employer, ... or employee of such employer or principal, for said injury ...
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“Nothing in this Chapter shall affect the liability of the employer, ... or employee of such employer ... civil or criminal, resulting from an intentional act.”

Under the above statute, an injured employee may seek recovery in tort for a work-related injury intentionally caused by his co-employee.

The Louisiana Supreme Court in Bazley v. Tortorich, 397 So.2d 475, 481 (La.1981), defined an intentional act as follows:

[555]*555“The word act is used to denote an external manifestation of the actor’s will which produces consequences....
The meaning of ‘intent’ is that the person who acts either (1) consciously desires the physical result of his act, whatever the likelihood of that result happening from his conduct; or (2) knows that that result is substantially certain to follow from his conduct, whatever his desire may be as to that result. Thus, intent has reference to the consequences of an act rather than to the act itself.
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... Only where the actor entertained a desire to bring about the consequences that followed or where the actor believed that the result was substantially certain to follow has an act been characterized as intentional.”

More recently, in Caudle v. Betts, 512 So.2d 389 (La.1987), the Louisiana Supreme Court further clarified the meaning of an intentional act arising in the context of a battery occurring during “horseplay.” In Caudle, the Court found that an intentional battery had occurred when plaintiff’s employer’s principal owner and chief executive officer intentionally shocked the plaintiff with an auto condenser as a practical joke. The “horseplay” resulted in serious injury to the plaintiff’s occipital nerve.

The Caudle Court, in finding that the harmful or offensive contact was intentional, stated, at page 391:

“A harmful or offensive contact with a person, resulting from an act intended to cause the plaintiff to suffer such a contact, is a battery.”

The Court continued, in defining “intent,” as follows:

“The intent with which tort liability is concerned is not necessarily a hostile intent, or a desire to do any harm. Restatement (Second) of Torts, American Law Institute § 13, (comment e) (1965). Rather it is an intent to bring about a result which will invade the interests of another in a way that the law forbids. The defendant may be liable although intending nothing more than a good-na-tured practical joke, or honestly believing that the act would not injure the plaintiff, or even though seeking the plaintiff's own good.”

Id., at page 391.

The facts of Caudle are readily distinguishable from the facts in this case in that there is no evidence that the harmful contact which injured plaintiffs resulted from an act intended to cause plaintiffs to suffer such contact.

Additionally, all of the plaintiffs’ co-employees, Richard Comeaux, Lane Johnson and Randy Henning, testified that they had no intent to injure the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs have presented no evidence to the contrary and do not seriously contend that the defendants desired to injure them.

Therefore, our only concern is the second prong of the Bazley test, whether plaintiffs' injuries were substantially certain to occur when the defendants failed to set the crown-o-matic.

The Bazley court reasoned that, “[i]f the actor knows that the consequences are certain, or substantially certain, to result from his act, and still goes ahead, he is treated by the law as if he had in fact desired to produce the result.” Bazley, at page 482.

Plaintiffs contend that an intentional tort occurred when their co-employees failed to set the crown-o-matic, because their co-employees knew that an injury was substantially certain to occur if the traveling block hit the crown of the rig.

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Related

Brown v. Diversified Hospitality Group, Inc.
600 So. 2d 902 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1992)
King v. Schuylkill Metals Corp.
581 So. 2d 300 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1991)
Chaisson v. Henning
531 So. 2d 277 (Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1988)
Meche v. Henning
525 So. 2d 556 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1988)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
525 So. 2d 553, 1988 La. App. LEXIS 1116, 1988 WL 45663, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/chaisson-v-henning-lactapp-1988.