Gorham v. Zachry Industrial, Inc.

105 So. 3d 629, 2013 WL 238207, 2013 Fla. App. LEXIS 924
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedJanuary 23, 2013
DocketNo. 4D11-2620
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 105 So. 3d 629 (Gorham v. Zachry Industrial, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gorham v. Zachry Industrial, Inc., 105 So. 3d 629, 2013 WL 238207, 2013 Fla. App. LEXIS 924 (Fla. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

WARNER, J.

Appellant challenges the trial court’s summary judgment in his personal injury claim against his employer. The trial court concluded that the employer had worker’s compensation immunity based upon the facts of the case. The appellant contends that material issues of fact remained as to whether he met the exception for employer immunity set forth in section 440.11, Florida Statutes. We agree with the trial court that, based upon the narrow exception adopted by the Legislature that an employer must know that its conduct is virtually certain to cause injury, the employer is entitled to immunity.

Appellant, Gorham, an employee of ap-pellee, Zachry Industrial, Inc., sued Za-chry in June 2008, alleging an intentional tort causing injury to appellant while he was working on a construction project. Zachry had contracted with Florida Power & Light (“FPL”) to build a natural gas plant in Loxahatchee, Florida. During the process of setting a wall at the plant, Gorham was injured. To avoid Zachry’s statutory worker’s compensation immunity from tort, he alleged in his complaint that Zachry “engaged in conduct that it knew based on explicit warnings specifically identifying a known danger was virtually certain to result in injury or death to [Gorham],” and that Gorham “was not aware of the risk because the danger was not apparent and [Zachry] deliberately concealed or misrepresented the danger so as to prevent [Gorham] from exercising informed judgment about whether to perform the work.” Gorham sought damages based on the accident.

The incident in which Gorham was injured occurred while Gorham was working as a rigger on the FPL power plant construction site. On the day of the accident, the crew was attempting to lift and place a nine-ton wall. Two cranes were available [631]*631to lift the large pre-fabricated wall into place. A tag line to keep the wall from swaying as the crane lifted the wall was attached to the wall, and because of the danger of swaying, attention to the wind speed was very important. On the day before the incident, the general foreman cancelled this lift because the winds were over 20 miles per hour.

That morning, the general foreman and the supervising foreman conducted a safety meeting with the crew. They filled out a Safety Task Assignment form. The form contained questions such as “How Can I Get Hurt.” The supervisor filled in “Bad Weather.” Another entry asked “How Can I Keep From Getting Hurt,” and the supervisor wrote, “Watch for lightning & high winds.” The entire crew, including Gorham, signed the form.

The morning of the incident Gorham participated in the first lift, in which the wall was raised slightly. Gorham said he didn’t feel any wind. The crane operator could not check the wind speed, however, because his crane did not have an anemometer, although he noted that there was no wind at 10:15 a.m. Even so, the crane operator radioed the general foreman to ascertain if he had checked the wind speed, who said that he had, and the speed was 16-18 miles per hour. The crane operator, however, recalled that the foreman told him the speed was 12-15 miles per hour.

At the time of the lift, Gorham was on the tag line. The general foreman sounded the horn, meaning that the lift would commence. After the wall was vertical, Gorham walked over to help others disconnect shackles off the wall. The crane operator began to move the wall alongside the cooling tower near the site, and once the wall got into that area, “[t]he wind owned it.” Gorham tried to stabilize the wall, which then began dragging Gorham.

The crane operator sounded the emergency horn, which means that “everybody is supposed to run” and “[l]et it go.” Gor-ham, however, did not let go, grabbed a rope around his arm, and wrapped his arm ai’ound the tag line. The crane operator pulled the swinging wall up against the stack to stop the movement. The operator told the general foreman that the wind grabbed the wall as it came around the corner and that Gorham was holding onto the rope at the time. Gorham received significant injuries to his arm.

The crane operator waited for the wind to die down for forty-five minutes to an hour and then made the second attempt. In the meantime, he checked the wind again, which was varying between 5 and 25 mph. The wind continued to cause difficulties in completing the second lift.

In his deposition, Gorham testified that he thought that the general foreman had not checked the wind speed, even though the crane operator had called him for a check. Gorham was certain that no one checked the wind speed, except for at 8 a.m. that morning, while the lift occurred around noon. He testified, however, that because he was on the tag line (which would be more dangerous in higher winds), he, too, asked the general foreman to check the wind, although he did not believe that the foreman actually checked the wind.

Contrary to Gorham’s testimony, the general foreman said that Gorham had not personally asked him to check the winds. Nevertheless, he had checked the winds as requested by the supervising foreman, and they were at 16-18 miles per hour. As noted above, the crane operator recollected that the general foreman had reported winds between 12 to 15 miles per hour, because he would not have made the lift if the winds were 18 miles per hour. Gor-[632]*632ham testified that it was the crane operator who told him after the incident that the winds had not been checked.

Gorham admitted that “[t]he wind is the first” danger in performing such a lift, since it “is always a factor.” He said, “The weather is 90 percent of it.” He admitted that he had always been aware of these dangers. However, Gorham testified that even with this knowledge, he “counted on [the foreman] to tell me, either make the lift or not make the lift.” Additionally, Gorham stated that even though he thought the wind speed “had to be over 30 miles an hour,” he “was kind of under the impression that the wind speed was fine because of what I got from my general foreman ... that the wind was fine is exactly what I was told.” Before the lift, however, another crew member and Gor-ham had a conversation in which both agreed that while there may not be a problem with the wind standing the wall up, there may be a problem setting it.

However, Gorham also testified that the general foreman “may have” told him that the wind speed was 12 or 18 miles per hour, at which point Gorham would have admittedly gone ahead with the lift. Gor-ham also acknowledged that when he was walking the entire path of the lift before the lift, he observed sand blowing off the ground “[r]ight in front of the crane,” which made him believe that “[t]he wind was too high through the whole thing.”

Zachry moved for summary judgment. In its motion, Zachry argued that there are no disputed issues of material fact on the question of whether it was entitled to immunity under section 440.11(1), Florida Statutes, which provides for workers’ compensation immunity when the plaintiff is provided with workers’ compensation. After a lengthy hearing on all the issues, the court granted the summary judgment, ruling that Gorham did not demonstrate the statutory requirements for the exception to workers’ compensation immunity. First, the employer did not know, as a result of an explicit warning of a known danger, that there was a virtual certainty that injury or death would occur as a result of the lift. Second, Gorham was aware of the risks involved, and no evidence showed that the employer deliberately misled him into taking a risk.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
105 So. 3d 629, 2013 WL 238207, 2013 Fla. App. LEXIS 924, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gorham-v-zachry-industrial-inc-fladistctapp-2013.