Case Title: Hall v. Harris

Citation: 504 So. 2d 271

Docket Number: 

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1987-02-27T00:00:00Z

Document:
504 So. 2d 271 (1987)
George E. HALL
v.
R.D. HARRIS and Ron Cunningham.
85-1224.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
February 27, 1987.
Jim L. DeBardelaben of McPhillips, DeBardelaben & Hawthorne, Montgomery, for appellant.
William I. Hill II and Alex L. Holtsford, Jr., Hill, Hill, Carter, Franco, Cole & Black, Montgomery, for appellees.
SHORES, Justice.
This is an appeal from summary judgments granted in favor of defendants Ron Cunningham and R.D. Harris in a co-employee liability suit.
The plaintiff, George E. Hall, was employed as a "head tapper" at Ohio Ferro-Alloys' facility in Montgomery. His job was to clean dross from a furnace tap hole so that hot liquid metal could flow out of the furnace. This was accomplished by firing an 8-gauge kiln gun into the tap hole.
On April 23, 1984, the plaintiff was cleaning out the tap hole when some type of projectile or object passed through his safety *272 goggles and hit his right eye. Presently, the plaintiff is without sight in that eye.
Plaintiff filed a lawsuit in which he claimed workmen's compensation benefits and sought damages based on co-employee liability against three persons, none of whom are parties to this appeal. The workmen's compensation claim was severed and tried separately, and later defendants Cunningham and Harris were added as defendants on the co-employee liability claims.
On separate motions for summary judgment, the trial court found that neither Cunningham, as president of Ohio Ferro-Alloys Corporation, nor Harris, as assistant vice-president of production of the same company, could be liable under Alabama's co-employee liability law, since their duties were strictly administrative. Pursuant to Rule 54(b), A.R.Civ.P., the trial court directed the entry of a final judgment as to defendants Harris and Cunningham, and this appeal followed.
On summary judgment, the movant must show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that he is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. Rule 56, A.R.Civ.P. Cunningham and Harris clearly met that burden.
Cunningham filed his personal affidavit along with his motion for summary judgment, stating in pertinent part:
Plaintiff filed a brief in opposition to Cunningham's motion for summary judgment and attached his own deposition and a copy of the minutes from a safety committee meeting on July 22, 1980, four years before the accident, that may have been sent to Cunningham. Plaintiff's deposition speaks in general terms and does not even mention the defendants' names. It does not create a genuine issue of material fact. The minutes of the July 1980 meeting contain a one-sentence statement that an employee's glasses had been shattered while firing the kiln gun, and that the incident would be investigated by a Mr. E.G. Simms. We simply cannot find that this statement creates an issue as to whether there was a delegated or assumed duty on Cunningham to personally and directly care for the safety of an employee who performed that job four years later.
Along with Harris's motion for summary judgment, his affidavit of Harris was filed. It provides in pertinent part:
The plaintiff filed an affidavit in opposition to Harris's motion for summary judgment. The affidavit was of Eugene Louis Moncreaf, the head furnaceman at the plant where the plaintiff was injured. Moncreaf's affidavit is based largely on hearsay, namely that he had been informed by another party that Harris had said that he did not see anything wrong with firing the kiln gun while on the kiln gun deck, and that it had been represented to Moncreaf that Harris was in charge of safety procedure for Ohio Ferro-Alloys Corporation. Hearsay cannot create an issue of fact. Rule 56, A.R.Civ.P. Thus, that part of Moncreaf's affidavit cannot be considered.
In addition, Moncreaf states that he believes, but does not know, that Harris had observed a head tapper firing a kiln gun in the same manner as the plaintiff. Speculation and subjective beliefs are not the equivalent of personal knowledge and do not satisfy the requirements of Rule 56(e). Thus, since Moncreaf's affidavit fails in these two respects, it does not serve to create a genuine issue of material fact.
We agree with the trial court's order of May 30, 1986, granting Harris's motion for summary judgment. In pertinent part, the order states as follows:
We hold that the orders of the trial court granting summary judgment in favor of Cunningham and Harris are correct because the evidence shows without contradiction that their respective duties were strictly administrative in nature, and the evidence offered by the plaintiff does not create a genuine issue to the contrary.
Accordingly, the judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
TORBERT, C.J., and JONES, ADAMS and STEAGALL, JJ., concur.