Opinion ID: 1952376
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Townsends and Reid Facts of Relationship

Text: Townsends operates a chicken processing business. Townsends' Delaware plant processes approximately 1,350,000 chickens per week. Consequently, each day an average of more than 250,000 chickens are caught and delivered to Townsends for processing. Townsends operates two shifts each day to accomplish these results. Townsends hired seven weighmasters to assemble chicken catching crews. Those crews remove live birds from chicken houses on farms operated by Townsends' growers. The catchers load the chickens into cages for transportation to Townsends' processing plant in Millsboro, Delaware. Townsends hired Reid as a weighmaster. Reid performed his services as a weighmaster for Townsends exclusively, for at least five years prior to the time of Reid's accident involving Fisher. [2] The relationship between Townsends and Reid continued pursuant to oral understandings until the summer of 1992. In July 1992, Townsends presented Reid with a written Catching Crew Agreement. The parties disagree about whether the Catching Crew Agreement was executed prior to Reid's accident. [3] There is a consensus, however, that the written agreement was not intended to change or alter the nature of the longstanding relationship between Reid and Townsends. Each chicken catching crew consisted of seven members and a foreman. Each crew was transported to and from work sites in vehicles that Reid owned. The catchers were generally picked up at their homes by a foreman in the vehicles assigned to each crew by Reid. At each farm, the catchers physically removed the birds from the chicken houses and placed them into cages that Townsends provided. A Townsends' employee forklift operator was responsible for placing the empty cages on stools in the chicken houses and returning the full cages to the trucks for hauling. Townsends' employees transported the chickens on its tractor trailers from the farms to its processing plant. Townsends also hired a Live Haul Manager, who would visit its growers' farms periodically, to see if the weighmasters, forklift operators or truck drivers were experiencing problems. Townsends coordinated its operations with a daily work order known as a Flock Movement Sheet. These sheets were distributed each day throughout its system. The sheet identified the various farm locations that the weighmasters, forklift drivers and chicken cage truck drivers would report to for each day's work. Everyone involved in the collection and transportation of Townsends' chickens to its plant was required to comply with the Flock Movement Sheet. Townsends' Live Haul Manager oversaw the entire chicken catching, loading, and hauling process, including the weighmasters' actions. The Live Haul Manager would normally deal directly with the weighmasters. These communications included requesting the weighmasters to correct the chicken catchers conduct. If a weighmaster failed to take corrective action, Townsends could direct the weighmaster to discharge the chicken catchers, or terminate the weighmaster himself. Townsends supplied Reid with a Flock Movement Sheet everyday. Each sheet identified: the farm where the day's work was to be done; the total number of birds to be removed; which of Reid's crews was assigned to the job; the time that the crew was to report; and the number of birds to be placed in each cage, to keep the birds from overheating and dying. In addition, Townsends supplied the cages for the chicken catching crews to use. Townsends also provided the chicken catchers with paper masks and disposable gloves. Townsends required its weighmasters to keep two way radios in the vehicles they used to transport their crews. In fact, Townsends supplied Reid with radios for both of his transport vehicles. These radios permitted Townsends to advise Reid and its other weighmasters of changes in work sites or daily orders. Similarly, the radios enabled the weighmasters to communicate with Townsends about any work-related problems. Pursuant to Reid's oral agreement with Townsends, Reid assembled two chicken catching crews. They were denominated, for identification purposes, as Crew 1 and Crew 2. Fisher was a member of Crew 2. Charles Pitts (Pitts) was the foreman of Crew 2. The vehicle assigned to Crew 2 was a 1980 Ford van. [4] As the foreman, Pitts picked up the members of Crew 2 in the 1980 van and drove them to each day's work sites.