Opinion ID: 2624174
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Dispute About Milos's Clock Status at the Time of the Accident Is Genuine.

Text: The estate argues that the question whether Milos was on- or off-shift at the time of the accident is both genuine and material to whether Milos's injuries arose out of and in the course of his employment with Quality. The superior court appears to have thought that the dispute over Milos's clock status was genuine but held that the dispute was not material. Quality argues that Milos's clock status is neither genuine nor material. We turn first to the question of genuineness. The standard for finding a genuine issue of fact at summary judgment is lenient. We will not engage in a weighing of the evidence on summary judgment; there is a `genuine issue' of material fact as long as the non-movant has presented some evidence in support of its legal theory. [8] Thus we have held that a putative father created a genuine issue of fact by contesting a highly accurate paternity test with a sworn statement that he was not the father. [9] Under this lenient standard, the estate submitted enough evidence to create a genuine issue of fact as to Milos's clock status. Crusher operator Crawley testified in his deposition that he thought Milos's shift on the day of the accident ran from noon to 10:00 P.M. The DOSH report places the time of the accident at between 10:00 and 10:30 P.M. Crawley also testified that he had no reason to dispute an alleged police report [10] stating that troopers responded to the 911 call regarding Milos's accident at 10:08 P.M. A factfinder could reasonably find from this evidence that the accident occurred after Milos's shift ended. Although Quality points to what it calls the unequivocal testimony of Cummins that Milos was on-shift at the time of the accident, the DOSH report and Crawley's testimony, if believed, suggest that Milos's shift ended before the accident occurred. It is for a factfinder to determine which witnesses are most credible. Quality argues that there is no evidence that Crawley had personal knowledge of what time Milos's shift ended on the day of the accident and that Crawley's testimony is therefore inadmissible under Alaska Evidence Rule 602. Rule 602 prohibits witnesses from testifying to a matter unless it is demonstrated that they have personal knowledge of it. The estate's attorney asked Crawley how he knew the hours of Milos's shift. Crawley responded: Well, it's just that we had one technician. He's taking care of two shifts. And when he come in at noon, he took care of the first shift, and then the lastlater part of his shift afterwhen first shift stopped and then night shift started, the second shift, there is a 30-minute dead time of the two shifts corresponding, ganging up, getting the maintenance done on the crusher, oiling or anyyou know, taking care of any problems. And then he would take off. Then we would take off. Brett [Milos] would be back to take samples. He would run one sample, two samples for me andhe would run one sample. If all the samples were good that day, he would run one sample. If we were having problems where our gradations were jumping around on us and stuff, he would hang in there and run more samples. Although this passage is a little hard to decipher, it appears to establish that Crawley was basing his statements about Milos's hours on both his knowledge obtained through working with Milos and his understanding that the overall operation required materials testers to work at certain times relative to the crews. It is true that Crawley's statements appear to be informed by general knowledge of Milos's typical working hours rather than by specific knowledge of his hours on the day of the accident. But evidence of Quality's routine practice of assigning shifts is admissible under Alaska Evidence Rule 406 to prove that the conduct of the . . . organization on a particular occasion was in conformity with the . . . routine practice. Crawley's explanation therefore provides an adequate foundation for his statement despite testimony of other employees that Milos was working different hours on the day of the accident. If the factfinder were to find Crawley's testimony more credible than that of Quality's witnesses, it could properly find that Milos's shift ended at 10:00 P.M.