Opinion ID: 441783
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Stockholder of Corporate Employer Immune from Tort Suit by Injured Corporate Employee?

Text: 20 As an alternative basis for dismissing Dorden's tort claim against Heist, the district court relied upon a 1976 amendment to the Louisiana Worker's Compensation Law, La.R.S. 23:1032 (1976). The amendment provided for statutory immunity from suit in tort to any officer, director, stockholder, partner or employee of the employer or principal of an employee injured in the course and scope of his employment. La.R.S. 23:1032 (1976) (emphasis added). 5 In finding the above-stated immunity applicable, the district court found that, as the sole stockholder of Hydro-Tech, Heist was a stockholder within the meaning of the statute and consequently immune from Dorden's suit in tort. 21 We disagree. For reasons to be stated, the subject statutory immunity is not applicable to the challenged acts of Heist in this case. 22 The Supreme Court of Louisiana has recently noted the legislative purpose and intent of the 1976 amendment to La.R.S. 23:1032, adding to the compensation statute the officer, director, stockholder, partner or employee immunity from tort suit. As stated in Bazley v. Tortorich, 397 So.2d 475, 479 (La.1981), the amendment was enacted to provide employers relief from the cost of furnishing liability insurance to executive officers and other employees, since prior to the amendment the availability of such suits had meant that the employer's enterprise would in the end pay for the tort remedy, resulting in a denial to the employer of much of the practical advantage of the exclusive remedy provision. See also Malone and Johnson, 14 Louisiana Civil Law Treatise: Workers' Compensation, Sec. 364 at 155-56 (1980). 23 The immunity so legislatively intended thus related to those acts of corporate functionaries that injured corporate employees for which a compensation remedy against the employer had traditionally been available. Indeed, the 1976 amendment to La.R.S. 23:1032 (quoted at note 5, supra ) specifically limited its immunity for acts in which the corporate functionary had engaged in the normal course and scope of his employment. 24 In the present instance, the plaintiff Dorden sues to hold Heist, the stockholding parent corporation, for its negligence in the design, manufacture, and assembly of a truck that caused Dorden's injuries. The manufacture, design, and assembly of a truck is not within the normal course and scope of a shareholder's duties within the meaning of the statute--i.e., Heist is not sued in its capacity as shareholder of its subsidiary, Dorden's employee. 25 The 1976 statutory immunity was not legislatively intended to exempt, simply because of the happenstance of a tortfeasor's stock ownership, a tortfeasor from tort liability for any tortious act whatsoever he committed that injured an employee of a corporation in which the tortfeasor holds stock. Rather, by the wording of the statute, the provision was legislatively intended to exempt the shareholder from tort liability to an injured corporate employee only for acts committed in the normal course and scope of his function as stockholder. 26 We therefore conclude that the district court erred in granting Heist summary judgment on the ground that Heist was a stockholder of the injured plaintiff's corporate employer.