Case Title: Kennemer v. McFann

Citation: 470 So. 2d 1113

Docket Number: 

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1985-03-15T00:00:00Z

Document:
470 So. 2d 1113 (1985)
Michael KENNEMER, J.W. Wallace, Charles Partain, and Ricke Jenkins
v.
Paul J. McFANN, Kathy McFann, and Curtis Broughton.
83-82.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
March 15, 1985.
Rehearing Denied May 10, 1985.
*1114 William W. Sanderson, Jr. of Lanier, Shaver & Herring, Huntsville, for appellants.
John Plunk of Alexander, Corder & Plunk, Athens, for appellees.
JONES, Justice.
This co-employee suit, pursuant to Code 1975, § 25-5-11, presents three issues on appeal: Whether the trial court erred 1) in its oral instructions to the jury with respect to the duties owed to Plaintiffs by Defendants; 2) in its denial of Defendants' motions for a directed verdict and judgment notwithstanding the verdict; and 3) in instructing the jury on certain rules of the road.
Plaintiffs Paul J. McFann and Curtis Broughton[1] suffered on-the-job injuries while passengers in a truck owned by their employer, Wright and Lopez, Inc., and operated by their immediate supervisor, Michael (Mike) Kennemer, one of the Defendants. Although the case was initiated against multiple third-party defendants, it was submitted to the jury against Mike Kennemer, J.W. Wallace, Charles Partain, and Ricke Jenkins, co-employees of the injured Plaintiffs.
The statement of Plaintiffs' claims may be summarized as follows: 1) the driver of the truck, Kennemer, was negligent in beginning descent of a mountain when he knew or should have known that the truck was overloaded and that it had a defective braking system; in descending the mountain in too high a gear; in descending with excessive speed; in failing to inspect the truck's and its trailer's braking systems; in failing to provide a safe place for Plaintiffs to work; and in failing to implement an effective safety program; 2) supervisors Jenkins, Partain, and Wallace were negligent in inspecting the truck's and its trailer's braking systems; in failing to properly train, instruct, and warn Defendant Kennemer in the use, operation, maintenance, and management of the truck; in failing to provide a reasonably safe place for Plaintiffs to work; in failing to implement an effective safety program; and in failing to warn Defendant Kennemer of the defective condition of the truck's and its trailer's braking systems.
The jury instruction made the basis of this allegation of error reads:
This instruction, say Appellants, left the jury with the erroneous impression that the law imposed upon co-employee defendants the same duty as that imposed by law upon employers. If the trial judge's instruction had ended here, we would not hesitate to reverse the judgments; however, the above-quoted language is but a portion of his entire charge relating to the co-employee Defendants' legal duty. It is not necessary to set out the whole of his instructions. Suffice it to quote the judge's comments in response to Defendants' objection:
The record supports the trial judge's own explanation that his reference to the "safe place" statutea duty imposed upon the employerwas a mere background or overview approach from which he then detailed the requirement of assumption or delegation of that duty to or by the co-employee as a requisite for a finding of individual liability. Indeed, the trial court gave the Defendants' requested charges 10 and 13:
The subject of co-employee liability has evoked scholarly comment in recent years in both the Alabama Lawyer and the Cumberland Law Review. We quote from J. Smith, Common Law Liability of Supervisory Employee to Subordinate, 40 Ala.Law. 230, 251 (1979):
*1116 In a law review note, Co-Employee and Workmen's Compensation Carrier SuitsCommon-Law Assault Upon Workmen's Compensation Exclusivity in Alabama, 11 Cum.Law Rev. 639, 648 (1980), the following appears:
The analysis of these two legal articles, beginning with the employer's duty and then tracing that duty forward to the employee when it is delegated to or assumed by the employee, is in essence the analysis used by the trial judge in the instant jury instructions. Furthermore, his instructions left for the jury's determination all factual issues raised by the evidence.
The trial judge, by quoting portions of § 25-1-1, 1975 Code, when taken in concert with the entire charge, including giving Defendants' requested instructions, informed the jury that the employer is primarily responsible for providing employees a safe place to work, but that that duty may be assumed by or delegated to a co-employee, who may be liable for its breach. Furthermore, it was clear from the judge's instructions that without personal fault on the part of a co-employee defendant, regardless of the liability of some other person, the co-employee defendant must be absolved. We hold, therefore, that the trial judge's charge, when taken as a whole, did not constitute reversible error. Treadway v. Brantley, 437 So. 2d 93 (Ala.1983). See, also, Welch v. Jones, 470 So. 2d 1103 (Ala. 1985).
While Appellants/Defendants have argued each of the three issues presented vigorously and thoroughly, it is fair to observe that they treat the directed verdict issue as their major ground for reversal. We agree that this is the most troublesome of the three issues. Our analysis of this issue must encompass an individualized treatment of the evidence as it relates to each individual co-employee Defendant.
We begin with Defendant Partain, who at the time of the accident maintained an office in Cedartown, Georgia, and who had general, administrative responsibility for the company-wide safety program.
Appellees/Plaintiffs have invited our attention to the following excerpts from the record as supportive of the judgment against Partain:
Partain contends that his general superintendence of the overall safety program for his employer did not impose upon him the individualized duty to personally inspect or to otherwise have personal familiarity with each item of the company's equipment; that, in fact, he had never seen the truck involved in this accident; and therefore that the co-employee test of liability set out in Fireman's Fund American Ins. Co. v. Coleman, 394 So. 2d 334 (Ala.1980), and followed by Welch, supra, has not been met. We agree. We find that Partain's general administrative responsibility for company-wide safety, under the instant facts, bears such a remoteness to the specific defect which proximately resulted in Plaintiffs' injuries as to entitle Partain to a directed verdict at the close of the evidence, and failing this, to a JNOV.
We understand and appreciate the position of Appellees/Plaintiffs that Partain's own testimony (quoted above) made out a jury issue as to his liability. Appellees *1118 point specifically to his testimony to the effect that it was his duty "to see that the safety program and procedures were implemented and followed," and that "part of that safety program was that no unsafe conditions were allowed to exist." We reject Appellees' contention because we are unable to conclude that this testimony raises a reasonable inference of personal and individual culpability for the defective and unsafe condition of the truck which resulted in their injuries.
Next, we consider the liability of Kennemer, driver of the vehicle in question and the immediate supervisor of the injured Plaintiffs. An overview of the pertinent facts surrounding the accident is dispositive of this issue. Kennemer, as truck driver and foreman, and McFann and Broughton, as laborers, were assigned by their employer, Wright and Lopez, to set anchors for telephone poles on top of Keel Mountain in Madison County on July 25, 1980. They drove to the worksite in a two-year-old, two-ton truck outfitted with pole-setting equipment, including an air compressor mounted on a trailer. The trailer weighed between 3000 and 3600 pounds and was not equipped with brakes of any sort. Neither the speedometer nor the emergency brake on the truck was operative.
On the return trip from the jobsite, at the point of a curve about halfway down the mountain, with the truck operating in its third forward gear, the brakes failed completely, and, upon Kennemer's attempt to downshift, the clutch also failed. Kennemer was able to maneuver the truck about another half mile down the mountain before it crashed into a rock embankment. Experts testified to the effect that, under the totality of the circumstances, the lack of any brakes on the trailer, the inoperative speedometer and emergency brake system on the truck, and the failure of Kennemer to properly gear the truck down at the beginning of the descent of the mountain, were all contributing causes of the wreck.
In view of Kennemer's intimate familiarity with the truck over a period of several months and the circumstances under which he was operating it at the time of the accident, we have no difficulty in concluding that the trial judge did not err in denying Kennemer's motion for a directed verdict or JNOV. The evidence of Kennemer's liability was more than sufficient to meet the test of Fireman's Fund and Welch, supra.
Having concluded that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the judgment against Partain because of the remoteness of his duties with respect to the ultimate instrumentality of harm to the injured Plaintiffs, and having concluded to the contrary with respect to Kennemer's direct connection to the accident and the resulting injuries, we now direct our consideration to the remaining supervisory employees. Admittedly, Jenkins, as assistant area manager of Alabama operations, and Wallace, as supervisor of various foremen in North Alabama, with respect to their liability to the Plaintiffs, occupy some middle ground between the two extremes represented by Kennemer and Partain.
While the contrast between Partain's no-liability status and Kennemer's liability status, when viewed from the perspective of the sufficiency of the evidence, is readily apparent, the resolution of Jenkins's and Wallace's liability is more difficult. The evidence of record, however, reveals that the factual issue determinative of the two supervisors' liability is more closely akin to that of Kennemer than to that of Partain. While neither Jenkins nor Wallace was actively involved in the operation of the truck at the time of the accident, they each had personal knowledge that the truck in question was not equipped with an operative emergency brake system, that the trailer was equipped with no brakes, and that the condition of the truck being operated by Kennemer at the time of the accident was in direct violation of the company safety manual's requirement that "all rubber tire vehicles must have service brakes, emergency brakes, and parking brake systems in good service."
*1119 We appreciate the serious contention made by Jenkins and Wallace that they stand in the same no-liability shoes as Partain. They argue that Partain's delegation of responsibilities for safety to them was further delegated by them to truckdriver Kennemer. The facts supportive of Partain's position, however, are dissimilar to the facts surrounding the immediacy of the duties delegated to Jenkins and Wallace. Each of them had first-hand knowledge of the very defect which was a contributing cause to the injuries suffered by McFann and Broughton. Thus, as with Kennemer, we find no error in the trial court's denial of a directed verdict and JNOV as to Jenkins and Wallace.
We find no merit in the contention of Appellants/Defendants that the "Rules of the Road" instructions were improperly given because the Plaintiffs failed to prove that the accident in question occurred on a public highway. The record is replete with evidence, including maps of the area, from which the jury could reasonably infer that Keel Mountain Road is a public highway. Code 1975, § 32-1-1.1(23); Davenport v. Cash, 261 Ala. 380, 74 So. 2d 470 (1950).
AFFIRMED AS TO DEFENDANTS KENNEMER, JENKINS, AND WALLACE. REVERSED AND JUDGMENT RENDERED AS TO DEFENDANT PARTAIN.
FAULKNER, ALMON, SHORES, EMBRY and ADAMS, JJ., concur.
TORBERT, C.J., and MADDOX, J., concur specially.
BEATTY, J., concurs in part and dissents in part.
MADDOX, Justice (concurring specially).
Even though I believe that Grantham v. Denke, 359 So. 2d 785 (Ala.1978), which authorizes co-employee suits by persons covered by the Workmen's Compensation Act, was incorrectly decided (see my reasons in my dissenting opinion in that case), I can see no just reason to continue dissenting in like cases, especially in view of the fact that the legislature has now addressed the question of co-employee suits in Alabama by adopting legislation which affects those suits. Act No. 85-41, Acts of Alabama, adopted January 9, 1985, Second Special Session, 1984.
TORBERT, C.J., concurs.
BEATTY, Justice (concurring in part; dissenting in part):
I concur in the majority opinion except as to that part which deals with the liability of defendant Partain.
It is true that the testimony of defendant Partain indicates that as safety director, his general administrative duty was to implement the safety programs. However, he also testified that "it was a part of [his] duties to attempt to furnish a reasonably safe place and safe equipment" for the employees. Thus, Partain's duty was to do more than act as a mere supervisor of others; his duty was to actually furnish safe equipment, etc. This testimony provided at least a scintilla of evidence necessary to prove that Partain had a personal duty toward the injured employees themselves and not merely a general administrative duty. Therefore, the co-employee test of liability was in fact met.
[1]  The third Plaintiff is McFann's wife, Kathy, the validity of whose loss of consortium judgment, of course, rests upon the merits of her husband's case.
[2]  There follows an analysis of how co-employees may become liable for breach "of a duty that the employer owed the employee when the employer's duty is delegated to or is assumed by supervisors or officers." Id., at 650.