Opinion ID: 1717400
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Co-employee Immunity

Text: Counsel for the individual Defendants, insisting that Grantham should be overruled, advance several contentions. Each of them has as its central thrust that Grantham misapplied § 13, Alabama Constitution 1901. The most persuasive of these arguments is summarized in two cases of other jurisdictions that reject constitutional attacks on similar immunity statutes. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Jadosh v. Goeringer, 442 Pa. 451, 275 A.2d 58, 60-61 (1971), reasoned: The employee received economic insurance that his employment-related injuries will be compensated. He surrenders the right to sue employers or fellow employees for negligence but he no longer need prove negligence, his own contributory negligence is no longer a bar, and he, too, can no longer be sued for negligence by a fellow employee. Such a comprehensive program is not unconstitutional. The Illinois Court of Appeals addressed an identical challenge in Mier v. Staley, 28 Ill.App.3d 373, 329 N.E.2d 1, 8 (1975): Plaintiff also asserts that immunity results in a violation of the constitutional provisions giving every person a remedy for his injuries. (Article I, § 12, Illinois Constitution of 1970, Article II, § 19, Illinois Constitution of 1970). These sections do not require that any specific form or remedy be provided Plaintiff, rather they are the expression of a philosophy that some remedy be provided. (Citations omitted.) Implicit in these and other similar holdings is the quid pro quo test, the keystone of Grantham. As evidenced in the above-quoted language, Jadosh and Mier found this test had been met in a combination of two factors: (1) The comprehensive compensation scheme affords a remedy for job-related injury; and (2) It provides mutuality of immunity among co-employees; i. e., the injured employee is denied the right to sue a fellow employee but in exchange is granted immunity from suit by a fellow employee. The point of difference between this rationale and Grantham is substantial and significant. Those holdings, of which Jadosh and Mier are typical, may be said to adopt the collective interest or enterprise interpretation, while Grantham applies the severability of interest concept. That is to say, Grantham views § 13 (absent a perceived social evil eradication) as proscribing abolition of the fundamental guarantee that every person for any injury done him, in his ... person ... shall have a remedy by due process of law except within the framework of a quid pro quo test; and its holding applies this test to the relationship of the separate and several parties affected by the proposed immunity. The quid pro quo test of Grantham asks: Is there substantial give and take as between the injured party and the separate individual party to whom immunity is granted? Those cases holding contrary to Grantham pose a different question. Their concern is with the providing of some remedy against any party for the remedy abolished, not the substitution of a remedy against the same party to whom immunity is granted. It is of no consequence under their interpretation, that the substituted remedy is imposed exclusively against one partythe employereven though the statutory immunity provision embraces parties other than the employer. I find no justification for such an interpretation of § 25-5-11 in the instant context. I view the Workmen's Compensation Act as a statutory scheme regulating compensation for job-related injuries which governs the relationship between the employer and the injured employee. Its constitutional validity is sustainable by the application of a quid pro quo test to the employer-employee relationship of the affected parties. Any legislative attempt to extend the immunity provisions to additional parties is subject, upon constitutional challenge, to the same individually-particularized scrutiny; that is, the party to whom immunity is granted (here, the alleged tortfeasor co-employee) likewise must be subjected to a corresponding obligation to the injured employee. Stated otherwise, the give must be substantially commensurate with the take; and both elements must be present as between the affected parties independent of the rights and obligations of other parties. The only exchange of benefits, supporting co-employee immunity, is the mutuality of immunity implicit in its provision. Stated another way, the amended language of § 25-5-11 denies a job-related injured employee the right to sue his negligent co-employee and for this he gains the right to negligently inflict an on-the-job injury to his fellow employee without the risk of suit. The mutuality of immunity factor relied upon by some courts is necessarily dependent upon the totality of interest (or enterprise ) concept. It is evident that these courts are not saying, apart from the employer's obligation to pay compensation, that mutuality of immunity as between co-employees, of itself, would support its constitutionality. This point may be further dramatized by applying the same test to the original statutory scheme between employer and employee. If the original Workmen's Compensation Act had provided mutual immunity from suitthat is, if the employer's only obligation in return for its immunity was not to sue its employeesas its only exchange of benefits and obligations between the affected parties, unquestionably, the Act would not have withstood a § 13 attack. See Chapman v. Railway Fuel Co., 212 Ala. 106, 101 So. 879 (1924). I do not interpret Jadosh and Mier as so holding. These Courts simply look to the employer's obligation as an element within the total, overall statutory scheme and find sufficient offsetting benefits and obligations to constitutionally justify the co-employee immunity. My high regard for these Courts, however, does not persuade me to overrule Grantham. If § 13 is to retain any field of operation as organic law, the quid pro quo test to which this Court is committed, cannot be so loosely applied as to sanction the abolition of a fundamental right of redress on broad grounds that the substituted remedy consists in the prescribed obligations of a third party. I reaffirm Grantham's insistence that the quid pro quo be measured in relationship to the affected parties. Here, the mutuality of immunity between co-employees, as the only exchange of obligations and benefits, falls far short of that test. Moreover, Grantham accords with our fault-based reparation for injury concept. As noted by Professor Larson: ... social policy has dispensed with fault concepts to the extent necessary to ensure an automatic recovery by the injured workman; but the disregard of fault goes no further than to accomplish that object, and, with payment of the workman assured, the quest of the law for the actual wrongdoer may proceed in the usual way. 2A Larson's Workmen's Compensation Law, § 71.10 at 14-2. Any legislative attempt to abolish this fundamental right is suspect under § 13; and, generally, if challenged, such legislation will be invalidated unless the substituted remedy in favor of the injured party imposes commensurate obligations upon the party otherwise accountable for his culpable conduct. I next address the individual Defendants' alternative insistence that we validate the statutory immunity provision exempting from co-employee suits those defendants employed in supervisory capacities. I acknowledge that Jones v. Watkins, 365 So.2d 1144 (Ala. 1978), contains language, albeit dictum, that may be interpreted as supporting Appellants' contention. Jones v. Watkins' reference to a functional test suggests that an executive officer, depending upon the nature of his alleged activities, may avoid the absolutism of Grantham and enjoy the explicit immunity provisions of the Act. Jones, of course, did not so hold; and I expressly reject any dictum implying a distinction, for immunity purposes, between supervisory and nonsupervisory employees of a common corporate employer. Within the corporate employment structure, both classifications of employees are parties other than the employer. Ford v. Mitcham, 53 Ala.App. 102, 298 So.2d 34 (Civ. App.1974); Comment, Election and Co-employee Immunity Under Alabama's Compensation Act; 31 Ala.L.Rev. 2, 21 (1979). [1] II.