Opinion ID: 869683
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Common-work-area theory

Text: In its 1995 order in this case, the district court denied summary judgment to AAC on a retained-control theory without considering the common-work-area factors. Thus, when prompted in 2011 by AAC, the property owner, the district court correctly decided to reconsider the 1995 order. Looking at the question anew, the district court entered judgment in favor of AAC, holding that Ms. Richter could not meet the requirements of the third and fourth elements of the commonwork-area doctrine—the “significant number of workers” and the “common work area” elements. The district court’s decision appeared to turn on a question of timing. Ms. Richter argued that, over the course of normal workday, all of the workers of all four employers—as many as twenty in all—might use the same walkway on which Richter was killed. The court, however, reasoned that Ms. Richter was required to show a significant number of employees working for multiple subcontractors were exposed to the danger at the time of the accident. The evidence was that “only 15 three workmen, including the Decedent, were on the elevated pathway adjacent to the conveyor belt . . . at the time of the accident,” and that “only WMWI employees were present on the day the accident occurred.” Richter v. Process Mach., Inc., No. 94-cv-71301, 2012 WL 1354057, at  (E.D. Mich. Apr. 18, 2012). Because in this case, the district court explained, “the risk of danger posed by the defective sheave block and rigging system only exposed a few employees of one subcontractor to danger[,] [t]he common work area exception . . . does not apply.” Id. Michigan law, though, does not require such a result. Rather, the majority of published decisions support Ms. Richter’s position that the common-work-area determination is not confined to a snapshot in time. In Hughes v. PMG Bldg., Inc., the Michigan Court of Appeals explained that “[i]t is not necessary that other subcontractors be working on the same site at the same time; the common work area rule merely requires that employees of two or more subcontractors eventually work in the area.” 574 N.W.2d 691, 694 (Mich. Ct. App. 1997). The court gave further guidance, stating that the rule is “an effort to distinguish between a situation where employees of a subcontractor were working on a unique project in isolation from other workers and a situation where employees of a number of subcontractors were all subject to the same risk of harm.” Id. at 695. Likewise, the plurality opinion in Groncki v. Detroit Edison Co. reasoned that “for a common work area to exist there must be an area where the employees of two or more subcontractors will eventually work.” 557 N.W.2d 289, 297 (Mich. 1996).7 There, the plaintiff had established a 7 Groncki did not garner a clear majority, and therefore it is not binding authority. See Ormsby, 684 N.W.2d at 327 n.8. Nonetheless, the language of the plurality opinion in Groncki is consistent with the oft-cited Court of Appeals cases in Hughes v. PMG Building, Inc., 574 N.W.2d 691, 694 (Mich. Ct. App. 1997) and Candelaria v. B C Gen. Contractors, Inc., 600 N.W.2d 348, 353 (Mich. Ct. App. 1999), and therefore serves as persuasive authority in our diversity analysis. 16 genuine issue of material fact by putting forth evidence demonstrating that the site of the accident “was used by all workmen on the project,” while the defendant asserted that the injured worker “was the only person who worked in that area.” Id. A later case, Candelaria v. B C Gen. Contractors, Inc., echoes this conception of the doctrine, explaining that “[i]n order to have a ‘common work area,’ there need not be multiple subcontractors working on the same site at the same time. All that is required is that employees of two or more subcontractors eventually work in the same area.” 600 N.W.2d 348, 353 (Mich. Ct. App. 1999). Ormsby itself also favors Ms. Richter’s position and provides guidance on the proper standard. In Ormsby, the court expressly adopted the language of Hughes—with the core requirement that a significant number of workers of a number of contractors are “subject to the same risk or hazard.” Ormsby, 684 N.W.2d at 328 n.9 (quoting Hughes, 574 N.W.2d at 695); see Smith v. BREA Prop. Mgmt., 490 F. App’x 682, 685 (6th Cir. 2012) (concluding that Ormsby’s “statement of the doctrine . . . [requires] Smith to prove that SDI employees were subject to the same risk or hazard that caused Smith’s accident as employees of other subcontractors”). In Ormsby, the court also stated that the “high degree of risk to a significant number of workers must exist when the plaintiff is injured; not after construction has been completed.” 684 N.W.2d at 329 n.12. AAC interprets this language to suggest that the number of workers and subcontractors must be measured at the exact moment that the worker is injured. But this interpretation would ignore the second half of the sentence. Read as a whole, the sentence is consistent with the rest of the Ormbsy opinion and with the prior opinions in Hughes, Groncki, and Candelaria. The comparison to “after the work is completed” suggests that the time “when the plaintiff is injured” refers to the time period during the ongoing construction—not to a specific 17 moment. When a construction phase is over, the nature and extent of the risk to workers presumably changes, and is no longer the “same risk.” Of course, discerning the relevant time period need not involve a binary choice—during, or after, construction. Rather, it follows from Ormsby and its predecessors that the relevant time is the time period during which the hazardous activity is occurring or will occur—whether it lasts one hour, one day, or for the duration of a particular construction stage. See Smith, 490 F. App’x at 686 (measuring the number of contractors on site “[a]t the time of the hazardous activity”). The length of the relevant time period is defined by the continued existence of the same risk of harm in the same area. Finally, we cannot agree with AAC’s assertion that the one-paragraph decision in Alderman v. J.C. Dev. Communities, L.L.C., 780 N.W.2d 840, 840 (Mich. 2010), forecloses Richter’s argument. In Alderman, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals, stating: The risk of injury at issue here was the risk of electrocution from a subcontractor’s crane coming into contact with power lines above the construction site. The only employees exposed to the risk of electrocution were two to six employees of one subcontractor, including the plaintiff, and therefore there was not a high degree of risk to a significant number of workers. 780 N.W.2d at 840 (Mich. 2010) (citing Ormsby, 684 N.W.2d 320). In reversing the lower court’s decision, the Michigan Supreme Court rejected the lower court’s determination that the risk extended to other sections of the work site—a large construction site divided into lots where each subcontractor worked—simply because the power lines were near all thirteen lots. Id.; Alderman v. J C Dev. Communities., LLC, No. 285744, 2009 WL 2607084, at  (Mich. Ct. App. Aug. 25, 2009). The Michigan Supreme Court’s terse opinion contains no further explanation for its holding, but the most obvious one is that there was no common work area where a significant number of 18 employees were at risk. Given this reasonable factual basis for reversal, it would be wrong to instead choose to read into that brief paragraph a significant shift in the law on the timing issue. Hughes, Groncki, and Candelaria articulate a same-risk rule that is not limited to the moment of the accident, and the careful analysis in Ormsby appears to ratify that approach. Had the Michigan Supreme Court’s intent in Alderman been to reverse decades of precedent, it is only reasonable to expect it to have said so explicitly and provided its rationale. In sum, we consider Hughes, Groncki, Candelaria and Ormsby to represent the current state of the common-work-area doctrine. Under their more flexible temporal rule, a court must determine the risk at issue, how long the risk was or would be present, and whether a significant number of employees of multiple subcontractors were or would be exposed to that risk during its existence. Applied to Ms. Richter’s case, this rule suggests that it was proper to deny AAC’s motion for summary judgment. Ms. Richter presented evidence that the risk from the defective rigging could include the swinging sheave block that hit Richter and also the slingshot effect on the rest of the rigging.8 And the time period that the defective rigging and system resulted in these risks appears to have been longer than the single day on Saturday. The pull for the bottom half of the belt was performed on Wednesday and Thursday, and the rigging system for Saturday’s pull was set up—and possibly “tried”—on Friday. The employees of other contractors were present during the work week, and the conveyor was not cordoned off or otherwise inaccessible to those workers. At least one GMW worker, Dan Hardy, was present because he had loaned equipment apparently used in the 8 WMWI supervisor Rick West testified that on another construction site, a similar set up in which a vehicle was being used to pull a belt had resulted in a cable break, noting that “the cable broke and went zinging right by with [sic] three of us.” West Dep. 113–14, R. 177-1 at PageID #1928–29. 19 rigging to Ritchie. Ritchie himself was also present. This demonstrates that multiple contractors worked in the relevant area, the fourth element of the common-work-area doctrine, and that the belt pull may not have been “a situation where employees of a subcontractor were working in isolation from other workers.” Ormsby, 684 N.W.2d at 328 n.9 (quoting Hughes, 574 N.W.2d at 695). Furthermore, because the common-work-area doctrine requires “that employees of two or more subcontractors eventually work in the same area,” Candelaria, 600 N.W.2d at 353, we also must consider the risk that would have been present during all of the pulls necessary to complete the conveyor belt had the accident not occurred. In this case, the record is unclear as to whether the pull begun on Saturday morning was to be finished that day. But belt pulls for contiguous sections of the conveyor were performed shortly thereafter. Thus, had the accident not occurred, the apparently improper rigging system may have been used on subsequent days in the common-work-area. Ms. Richter has argued that as many as twenty workers—from four different employers—might use the catwalk where the accident happened on a normal business day, a number of employees that we assume would satisfy the “significant number” of workers element. And she points to the deposition testimony of Ritchie, stating that GMW, PMI, and Wheatland employees had to walk, stand, or utilize the conveyor belt line during the course of the project. App. at 379–83. Thus, to the extent that the belt pull had begun the prior week and could have continued into the next work week, there is a genuine dispute of fact as to whether a significant number of employees of multiple contractors would have been subject to the same risk. Under the correct legal standard, this evidence is sufficient to establish a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the conveyor-belt line was a common work area. 20