Martin County Coal Corporation v. Universal Underwriters Ins.

727 F.3d 589, 2013 WL 4310023, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 17029
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedAugust 16, 2013
Docket11-5773, 11-5793
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 727 F.3d 589 (Martin County Coal Corporation v. Universal Underwriters Ins.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Martin County Coal Corporation v. Universal Underwriters Ins., 727 F.3d 589, 2013 WL 4310023, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 17029 (6th Cir. 2013).

Opinions

MARTIN, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which KEITH, J., joined. ROGERS (pp. 598-600), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

BOYGE F. MARTIN, JR., Circuit Judge.

The legal issue in this case is whether an insurance company, Universal, must indemnify its insured, Crum Motor Sales, against a settlement that Crum Motor Sales entered into with a third party, Martin County Coal Corporation, to settle a personal-injury lawsuit that Crum Motor Sales and one of its employees, Philip Crum, brought against Martin County Coal for injuries Crum suffered while on Martin County Coal’s premises. We agree with the district court that Universal does not have any duty to indemnify Martin County Coal, standing in Crum Motor Sales’ shoes, because Crum Motor Sales proffered enough evidence in its summary-judgment motion on the indemnity issue to show that Crum Motor Sales was not actually legally liable to Martin County Coal in the personal-injury case. Crum Motor Sales was not actually legally liable to Martin County Coal because the basis of its supposed liability — an indemnification agreement that Martin County Coal and Crum Motor Sales entered into in 1997— was unenforceable because it was against public policy for two reasons. The first [591]*591reason is that the 1997 indemnification agreement was the product of a significant disparity in bargaining power between Martin County Coal and Crum Motor Sales. The second, and related, reason is that the 1997 indemnification agreement shifted liability for compliance with at least one mining-safety statute away from Martin County Coal and onto Crum Motor Sales. We therefore AFFIRM the district court’s judgment.

In 1997, Crum Motor Sales agreed to service Martin County Coal’s light-duty vehicles, such as pick-up trucks. At the time, Crum Motor Sales was a Kentucky-based company with five to nine employees. It was on the brink of insolvency. Martin County Coal, also a Kentucky-based company, was a wholly owned subsidiary of the A.T. Massey Coal Company, Inc., a Virginia-based corporation publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The agreement allowed Crum Motor Sales to enter Martin County Coal’s property to service its vehicles. Under the agreement, Crum Motor Sales’ employees would pick up Martin County Coal’s vehicles either at the coal mine’s guard gate or office, or elsewhere on the premises, and return them there after Crum Motor Sales had completed the repairs.

But because Crum Motor Sales’ employees would have to enter Martin County Coal’s mining site to retrieve the vehicles to be repaired, Martin County Coal also required Crum Motor Sales to enter into an indemnification agreement in 1997. The parties did not bargain over the indemnification agreement’s terms; Crum Motor Sales agreed to the terms that Martin County Coal put forth. According to this indemnity agreement, Crum Motor Sales agreed to “release, indemnify, defend and hold harmless Martin County Coal” over “any and all liabilities, demands, losses, claims and damages of any kind” caused by the acts or omissions of any of Crum Motor Sales’ employees while on Martin County Coal’s premises, and with respect to injuries or damages to Crum Motor Sales or its employees caused by Crum Motor Sales’ performance of work or service. The indemnity agreement also required Crum Motor Sales to provide Martin County Coal with proof of insurance coverage for workers’ compensation, commercial general liability, employer’s liability, and automobile liability “in amounts reasonably acceptable to Martin County [Coal].” Crum Motor Sales got coverage from Universal. The coverage was effective from September 2000 to September 2001 — the period during which Philip Crum was injured.

When Philip Crum, a forty-year-old single man and father of two dependent children, as well as an officer and employee of Crum Motor Sales, arrived at the entrance to Martin County Coal on the morning of January 19, 2001 to pick up a Martin County Coal vehicle for repair, he certainly did not know that he would spend the rest of the year in hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Crum asked David Canterbury, a Martin County Coal employee, if he could ride with him to the mine site to get a Ford pickup truck to take in for service. Canterbury agreed, and Crum got in on the passenger side of the 1997 Chevrolet 2500 series pick-up truck. Canterbury drove the truck across the mine property for almost eight miles along a company haul road.

Suddenly, near the area of Maynard Fork, as the Chevy ascended the last hill to the highwall miner pit, a boulder— measuring about three-and-a-half feet in girth — trundled down the slope on the right side of the road. The boulder gained enough momentum to clear a thirty-foot highwall before it struck the top of the pick-up trucks cab — directly above' where [592]*592Crum was seated. Canterbury would later state that he had no warning before the boulder hit. After impact, the pick-up truck rolled backwards before coming to a stop. The boulder was so heavy that Canterbury and another Martin County Coal employee could not move it from the truck cab, nor could they extract Philip Crum. It took a Caterpillar 988 loader and boom truck to remove the boulder and to pull the cab of the truck up and away from Crum so that he could be extricated. Crum emerged with broken bones — a left tibia, a fibula, and a right femur, as well as a fractured pelvis. He also sustained a concussion. Philip Crum spent the rest of 2001 in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, finally returning home to Inez, Kentucky on December 31, 2001.

Both a Kentucky and a federal mine-regulatory agency investigated the accident. A federal mine-safety regulation imposed on Martin County Coal a duty to “strip[ ]” “[l]oose hazardous material ... for a safe distance from the top of pit or highwalls” and otherwise secure “loose unconsolidated material.” 30 C.F.R. § 77.1001. The Mine Safety and Health Administration of the United States Department of Labor issued Martin County Coal a citation, having found that “[l]oose unconsilidated [sic] rock and dirt was present above the roadway leading to the Maynard Fork workings in the area where [the accident] occurred from falling rock.” The citation also stated that “[t]his condition existed for a distance of [about] 150-200 feet.” Whoever filled out the citation form checked a box indicating that Martin County Coal’s negligence was “moderate.” An administrative law judge of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission approved a settlement in which Martin County Coal agreed to pay a civil penalty of $6,000 “for the alleged violation of mine safety regulations.” Sec’y of Labor, Mine Safety & Health Admin, v. Martin Cnty. Coal Corp., 2002 WL 31056752 (F.M.S.H.R.C.).

Then, in 2002, both Philip Crum and Crum Motor Sales sued Martin County Coal in Kentucky state court in Martin County. In their complaint, they alleged that Martin County Coal and its employees were negligent and grossly negligent in maintaining its mining operations. They alleged that Martin County Coal and its employees allowed the slope above the roadway where the accident occurred to become unstable, which caused the boulder to roll down the slope and crash into the pick-up truck, injuring Crum. Philip Crum sought damages for his injuries, and Crum Motor Sales sought consequential damages, presumably in the form of lost income, stemming from Philip Crum’s injuries and his inability to work. But in answering the complaint, Martin County Coal counterclaimed against Crum Motor Sales.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
727 F.3d 589, 2013 WL 4310023, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 17029, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/martin-county-coal-corporation-v-universal-underwriters-ins-ca6-2013.