Merrill v. Lone Mt Processing

118 F. App'x 37
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit·Decided December 16, 2004·No. 03-6277·Unpublished·Cited by 3 cases

Opinions

CLAY, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs Geraldine and Kayla Merrill appeal from the September 5, 2003 Judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, granting summary judgment to Defendant Arch Coal, Inc. (“Arch”), in this wrongful death action. For the reasons set forth below, we REVERSE the district court’s judgment and REMAND the case for further proceedings.

[38] I. BACKGROUND

Procedural History

Plaintiffs are the widow and minor child of Gary Merrill, a deceased coal miner. Plaintiffs filed this action on October 7, 1999, in Kentucky state court.1 Defendants removed the case to federal district court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1441 and 28 U.S.C. § 1332. Plaintiffs filed a timely motion to remand the case back to state court, which the district court denied on May 2, 2000.

Defendant Arch moved for summary judgment on November 2, 2001. The district court initially denied Arch’s motion on March 25, 2002. However, the case was later reassigned to a different district court judge, and Arch renewed its motion. On September 5, 2003, the district court granted summary judgment to Arch.

Plaintiffs filed a timely Notice of Appeal with this Court on September 26, 2003.

Substantive Facts

A. Introduction

Decedent Gary Merrill (“Merrill”) was a continuous mining machine operator at the Darby Fork Mine in Harlan County, Kentucky. Around 11:00 p.m. on October 9, 1998, Merrill began work inside Darby Fork Mine No. 1. At approximately 12:25 a.m. on October 10, Merrill was killed when a very large piece of rock from the mine’s roof fell on top of him.

Merrill was an employee of Lone Mountain Processing, Inc. (“Lone Mountain”), which owns and operates the Darby Fork Mine. Lone Mountain, in turn, is a subsidiary of Defendant Arch. Arch is a Delaware corporation with its corporate offices in St. Louis, Missouri. Arch owns various mines in different regions of the country, each of which operates as a separate subsidiary. Lone Mountain’s general manager answers to the vice-president of Arch’s eastern division, and all of Lone Mountain’s budgets are submitted to Arch’s corporate offices in St. Louis.

Lone Mountain operates two separate mines in Harlan County, the Darby Fork Mine and the Huff Creek Mine. Work is completed in three shifts, each of which begins with a meeting to discuss the work to be performed on the shift and any safety issues that have arisen. Each shift also holds a safety meeting once per week, attended by the mine manager and superintendent, safety manager, shift supervisors, section foreman and all of the miners who work on the shift. Finally, the mine managers, safety manager and preparation plant manager meet once a month at the mine’s offices to discuss various issues, including safety.

Darby Fork is an underground mine, which is mined using the “room and pillar” method. In the room and pillar method, coal is mined using a continuous mining machine, which breaks the coal from the walls of the mine and moves it into a shuttle car. The shuttle car takes the coal to a conveyor belt, and eventually to the surface. As the coal is mined, it is cut into “rooms” of open spaces and “pillars” of coal left in between. The pillars support the mine roof, which is reinforced with roof bolts. The bolts prevent the ceiling from collapsing. As the mining is completed, the pillars are removed in a process called [39] retreat mining. At the time of Merrill’s death, his unit was retreating.

B. Mine Roof Control

Roof control is a primary safety issue in any coal mine because of the potential for catastrophe when the roof collapses. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (“MSHA”), a division of the Department of Labor, mandates that all mines “shall develop and follow a roof control plan, approved by the District Manager, that is suitable to the prevailing geological conditions, and the mining system to be used at the mine.” 30 C.F.R. § 75.220(a)(1) (2004). Lone Mountain was responsible for submitting its own roof control plan to MSHA for approval.

MSHA performed an investigation and issued a report following Merrill’s death. The report concluded:

The mine roof fell as a result of a failure of the installed roof control system. The installed roof bolts failed as a result of both horizontal and lateral loading on the roof bolts which was caused by second mining in the area. The second mining had caused additional weight to be shifted to the area of the accident which resulted in lateral movement in the immediate roof along the previously detected bedding plane. Despite increasing overburden pressures, adverse, and deteriorating roof and rib conditions being present, the mine operator failed to install additional roof support in order to support or otherwise control the mine roof where miners worked and traveled.

MSHA issued a citation to Lone Mountain pursuant to 30 C.F.R. § 75.202(a).2 In the citation, MSHA concluded that “The mine operator was aware that there was a separation in the roof strata seven (7) inches above the roof line. No additional support was provided in this area despite increasing overburden pressure and deteriorating roof conditions.” The Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals also issued two citations to Lone Mountain on October 12, 1998, for failure to fully comply with the mine’s roof control plan.

The MSHA citation alludes to a seven inch crack in the roof strata. Approximately half an hour prior to the accident, a mine employee discovered the crack in a test hole. Several of Merrill’s co-workers in the mine told Kentucky and MSHA interviewers that Merrill checked the roof prior to the accident and that nothing had seemed out of the ordinary. Gaither Frazier, Darby Fork’s mine manager, confirmed the detection of the seven inch crack, but maintained that Arch was not notified until after the accident.

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Merrill v. Lone Mt Processing, 118 F. App'x 37 (6th Cir. 2004).

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