Opinion ID: 854782
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Rudisill’s claims of error

Text: 1. Whether Ford rebutted the intent-to-injure presumption Rudisill claims that the district court erred in holding, as a matter of law, that Ford had rebutted the presumption of intent to injure. He maintains that the question should have gone to a jury. Rudisill’s argument is twofold. He first contends that, as a general matter, “whether a party has rebutted a presumption is an issue for the trier of fact.” Second, Rudisill claims that, under the particular circumstances of this case, he presented sufficient evidence to create a jury question as to the applicability of the presumption. Rudisill cites several Ohio decisions in support of the proposition that the question of whether a presumption has been rebutted must always go to the jury. But none of these decisions stand for the proposition that the issue of whether a presumption has been rebutted is categorically a jury question; they simply hold that, in the particular circumstances of those cases, a triable issue of fact was present. See Dudley v. Powers & Sons, LLC, No. WM-10-015, 2011 WL 1590252, at  (Ohio Ct. App. Apr. 22, 2011) (holding that, where the only evidence presented by the defendant to rebut the intent-toinjure presumption under Ohio Revised Code § 2745.01(C) was an affidavit from its manufacturing engineer attesting that no harm had been intended, the issue of whether the presumption had been rebutted was for the jury to decide); Zemanek v. Meseroll, No. C-75499, 1976 WL 189914, at -3 (Ohio Ct. App. Aug. 23, 1976) (holding that, where one minor injured another minor while shooting BB guns at each other during a game of “war,” and no evidence was presented as to whether the minors participated in the game “with intelligence and proficiency” rather than “thoughtlessly,” the applicability of the rebuttable presumption that minors are “incapable of forming the necessary judgment for self care” presented a genuine dispute of material fact). Indeed, there are several Ohio decisions—including one addressing the very presumption in Ohio Revised Code § 2745.01(C)—that hold as a matter of law that the applicable presumption was rebutted. See, e.g., Shanklin v. McDonald’s USA, LLC, No. 2008 CA 00074, 2009 WL 154034, at  (Ohio Ct. App. Jan. 20, 2009) (holding that No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 14 where an employee food preparer was injured by contact with an exposed inner wire of a microwave oven whose housing unit had been removed, the defendant rebutted the intent-to-injure presumption of § 2745.01(C) by putting forth uncontradicted evidence that the housing unit had been removed for repair and was replaced after repair, and that the employee was not required to work with the microwave for food preparation in the interim); Meek v. Cowman, No. 07CA31, 2008 WL 683972, at -5 (Ohio Ct. App. Mar. 7, 2008) (holding that the defendant rebutted the presumption that the testator was incompetent by putting forth several uncontroverted affidavits confirming the testator’s mental alertness around the time that he prepared his will); State ex rel. Benjamin v. Ohio Dep’t of Rehab. & Corr., No. 06AP-158, 2007 WL 1470464, at  (Ohio Ct. App. May 22, 2007) (holding that uncontroverted evidence of an incorrect service address rebutted the presumption of proper service of process). Rudisill has cited only one decision that arguably supports the proposition that the issue of whether a presumption has been rebutted is categorically for the jury to decide. In that case, the Ohio Court of Appeals held that the intent-to-injure presumption was inapplicable because the ventilator system that had been removed from a conveyor belt did not constitute an “equipment safety guard” within the meaning of the statute. Zuniga v. Norplas Indus., Inc., 974 N.E.2d 1252, 1258 (Ohio Ct. App. 2012). The court therefore affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment for the defendant on the intentional-tort claim. In dicta, however, the court set forth what it thought would be the proper analysis if the intent-to-injure presumption had in fact arisen: Once a statutory presumption of employer intent to injure is established, rebuttal of that presumption necessarily involves some weighing of evidence. This would preclude summary judgment on such an issue because weighing evidence or choosing among reasonable inferences is not permissible in a summary judgment analysis. Id. at 1257. We find this reasoning unpersuasive. Deciding whether the intent-to-injure presumption has been rebutted does not “necessarily” require the weighing of evidence. No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 15 Suppose, for example, that, as in Shanklin, the evidence is unequivocal and uncontroverted that the safety guard on a piece of equipment was removed for repair, that the employee was not required to work with the equipment in such condition, and that there is no evidence that anybody intended any harm. There would be no evidence to weigh under these circumstances. All the evidence would point in one direction and the answer would be clear as a matter of law. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 251-52 (1986) (holding that the inquiry on summary judgment is “whether the evidence presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law”). Of course, if the evidence adduced by a defendant to rebut the presumption is weak, or if a plaintiff presents substantial countervailing evidence, then resolution of the issue would require the weighing of evidence that would render summary judgment improper. See id. at 255 (“Credibility determinations, the weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts are jury functions, not those of a judge . . . .”). But that is a big “if.” As the Ohio decisions cited above demonstrate, not every case involves the weighing of evidence; sometimes the answer is clear as a matter of law. The dictum in Zuniga that deciding whether the presumption has been rebutted “necessarily involves some weighing of evidence,” 974 N.E.2d at 1257, is therefore incorrect. Instead, deciding whether a jury question is presented depends on the circumstances of the particular case and the evidence before the court. Rudisill essentially acknowledges this point when he purports to distinguish the Ohio decisions that resolved the presumption-rebuttal issue as a matter of law by arguing that “none of [those] cases . . . required the court to weigh any evidence.” So Rudisill apparently recognizes that the question of whether the presumption-rebuttal issue may be decided as a matter of law is not susceptible to a single categorical answer, but instead must be answered by reference to the evidence before the court in the particular case at hand. In rejecting the dicta in Zuniga, we also note that the question of whether summary judgment is appropriate is a question of federal law, not state law. No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 16 See generally 10A Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure § 2712 (“[I]n diversity-of-citizenship actions questions relating to the availability of summary judgment, such as whether there is a disputed issue of fact that is sufficient to defeat the motion, are procedural and therefore governed by Rule 56, rather than by state law.”); see also Shropshire v. Laidlaw Transit, Inc., 550 F.3d 570, 573 (6th Cir. 2008) (holding that “the Michigan provision [governing the circumstances under which a jury question is created in certain tort cases] is procedural, and therefore a plaintiff is not entitled to argue her case to a jury merely because she has satisfied its requirements,” but must instead “produce evidence creating a genuine issue of material fact, as required by Rule 56(c)”). In the present case, the parties appropriately cite to federal authorities in stating the black-letter summary-judgment standard. Once the black-letter standard is stated, however, they cite exclusively to Ohio authorities in arguing about whether the presumption-rebuttal issue should go to the jury or be decided by the court. The parties’ citations to Ohio decisions discussing the availability vel non of summary judgment, though certainly helpful in clarifying Ohio substantive law, are not binding on us with respect to whether sufficient evidence has been adduced to survive summary judgment. But as the above discussion demonstrates, the Ohio decisions cited by the parties (with the exception of Zuniga) appear to be in conformity with the federal standard. Returning now to the key point that the presumption-rebuttal issue may in some cases be properly decided as a matter of law by the court, the question becomes whether that was the correct decision in the present case. We conclude that it was. As explained above, the district court took stock of the pertinent evidence—the lack of any prior substantially similar incidents despite the hundreds of millions of hours worked at the plant; the lack of any prior citations or complaints involving substantially similar conditions; the admission by Rudisill and other employees involved in the flask-removal process that they did not think the process was dangerous; the fact that Rudisill had routinely engaged in the process hundreds of times without incident; Rudisill’s acknowledgment that he would have reported the condition if he had thought the process No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 17 was dangerous and, as Team Leader, would not have let his coworkers engage in the process; and Rudisill’s concession that he had no reason to think that his supervisor at Ford intended to harm him—and concluded that Ford had rebutted the presumption. We find no error in this conclusion. Instead of directly responding to the above evidence, Rudisill faults the district court for relying on the testimony of several Ford employees to the effect that “workers’ safety is important to Ford and that Ford does not deliberately intend to injure its employees.” He argues that the assessment of such generalized statements requires a credibility determination that should have been left to the jury. Rudisill is correct to the extent that the self-congratulatory affidavits stating that Ford is committed to workers’ safety would alone not be sufficient to rebut the presumption. See Dudley v. Powers & Sons, LLC, No. WM–10–015, 2011 WL 1590252, at  (Ohio Ct. App. Apr. 22, 2011) (“The testimony of a Powers employee [that there was no intent to harm] cannot be weighed so heavily to say that reasonable minds could not disagree on the issue of intent.”). But his argument as to the effect of these affidavits in the present case is misplaced because, even though the district court mentioned the “we love safety” affidavits, it did not attach any particular importance to them and did not rely on them in reaching its decision. Instead, the court relied on the hard, uncontroverted evidence that has been discussed above. The affidavits are therefore beside the point. Rudisill also argues that “to find that Ford rebutted the presumption, as the District Court did here, suggests that, in order to invoke the presumption in the first instance, Mr. Rudisill was required to present proof that the equipment safety guards were removed with the intent to injure. This undermines the very purpose of Ohio Rev. Code § 2745.01(C).” We are not persuaded by Rudisill’s interpretation of the district court’s ruling. A plaintiff is obviously not required to adduce evidence of an intent to injure in order to invoke the presumption of intent of injure; that is the point of a presumption. But once the presumption has been invoked, a defendant may rebut it by marshaling evidence that No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 18 there was in fact no intent to injure; that is the point of a rebuttable presumption. See Ohio Rev. Code § 2745.01(C) (“Deliberate removal by an employer of an equipment safety guard . . . creates a rebuttable presumption that the removal . . . was committed with intent to injure . . . .” (emphasis added)); Shanklin, 2009 WL 154034, at  (“[W]e find [that] the evidence presented rebuts the presumption that the removal of the housing unit was committed with the intent to injure the employee.”). The district court’s ruling that Ford had successfully rebutted the intent-to-injure presumption by adducing evidence of a lack of intent to injure does not mean that Rudisill was required to present evidence of an intent to injure in order to invoke the presumption in the first place. There is a significant difference between giving the defendant an opportunity to rebut a presumption and a finding that no presumption arose to begin with. Once the rebuttable presumption has been successfully invoked, the burden is on the defendant to rebut it by introducing evidence of the lack of an intent to injure; by contrast, in the absence of a presumption, the burden would be on the plaintiff in the first instance to introduce evidence of the intent to injure. See Ohio R. Evid. 301 (“[A] presumption imposes on the party against whom it is directed the burden of going forward with evidence to rebut or meet the presumption . . . .”); Ferrando v. Auto-Owners Mut. Ins. Co., 781 N.E.2d 927, 947 (Ohio 2002) (affirming that, once a presumption arises, the opposing party “bears the burden of presenting evidence to rebut” it). Ohio law, by the way, governs the effect of the presumption in this case. See Fed. R. Evid. 302 (“In a civil case, state law governs the effect of a presumption regarding a claim or defense for which state law supplies the rule of decision.”). This is in contrast to federal law governing the procedural question of whether summary judgment is appropriate in a particular case. (See supra for authorities on this latter point.) For all the reasons discussed above, the district court correctly held that Ford had successfully rebutted the presumption. We will therefore turn to Rudisill’s remaining issue on appeal. No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 19 2. Whether, in the absence of a presumption, there existed a triable issue of fact When a presumption is rebutted, the case proceeds as if the presumption had never arose. See, e.g., In re Guardianship of Breece, 184 N.E.2d 386, 394 (Ohio 1962) (“Where the presumption is a rebuttable one, as in this case, the production of evidence disputing or contrary to the presumption causes the presumption to disappear where such evidence to the contrary either counterbalances the presumption or even when it is only sufficient to leave the case in equipoise.”); Horsley v. Essman, 763 N.E.2d 245, 249 (Ohio Ct. App. 2001) (“We have previously characterized the effect of rebutting the presumption as ‘bursting the bubble,’ with the case then proceeding as if the presumption had never arisen.”). The inquiry thus becomes whether the plaintiff has adduced sufficient evidence to allow a reasonable jury to conclude that every element of the plaintiff’s claim has been met. In the present case, the focus is on the intent-toinjure element. Rudisill’s appellate briefs raise the following factors as evidence of Ford’s alleged intent to injure: (1) allowing employees to work over an exposed pit of molten metal without any guards to shield the pit and without any safety equipment; (2) the testimony of two of Ford’s safety engineers regarding Ford’s knowledge of the dangerous condition; (3) the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines or warnings about the hazards associated with exposed floor openings; and (4) Ford’s failure to conduct a job-safety analysis. We will examine each of these factors in turn to see whether, taken together, they would enable a reasonable jury to conclude that Ford intended to injure Rudisill. 1. Working conditions. As an abstract matter, having people hammer at a heavy iron flask suspended in the air by iron clamps while standing near the edge of an unguarded pit of molten metal without wearing any special protective equipment seems dangerous. And, in view of Rudisill’s unfortunate incident, the process seems even more dangerous with the benefit of hindsight. No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 20 But the relevant inquiry is not about dangerousness; it is about the deliberate intent to injure. And although one can hypothesize working conditions so dangerous as to raise a reasonable inference of an intent to injure, such an inference does not arise in the present case. To the contrary, even though the flask-removal process might seem dangerous to an armchair observer with the benefit of hindsight, it did not seem so to any of the Ford employees who had performed the task innumerable times for many years. None of these employees, including Rudisill himself, testified that he considered the process dangerous prior to the incident in question. Nor did a single employee ever complain, warn, or raise any red flags about the process. Indeed, Rudisill testified that, as a Team Leader, he would report any dangerous condition he saw to the foreman; that he had reported other dangerous conditions to the foreman in the past; that he would not “get into trouble” for reporting dangerous conditions; that the foreman was “responsive” and there was no reason to think that the foreman wanted anyone to get hurt; and that he had never required another employee to perform a task that he thought was dangerous. Yet Rudisill had never complained to anyone about the flask-removal process and never instructed other Ford employees not to engage in the process. To the contrary, as far as he was concerned, the process “worked” and he had never had “any problems” with it. Other employees similarly testified that they had never complained about the process, never heard of anyone complaining about it, and never considered the process to be problematic or unsafe. In light of all this uncontroverted testimony, as well as the lack of any similar incidents in the past, the conditions of the flask-removal process at the time that Rudisill was injured would not enable a reasonable jury to conclude that Ford intended to harm him. We would add that this is not a case where a company decides to throw safety to the wind and do whatever it takes to increase production. Rather, there was a specific functional purpose for temporarily removing the guard rails surrounding the pit. The removal enabled the employees to access the drag flask so that they could clean off the run-out. Rudisill conceded at oral argument that the guard rails’ removal was necessary No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 21 for this purpose. Of course, the fact that Ford’s actions had a specific functional purpose does not automatically exempt the process from intentional-tort analysis. And we know, in hindsight, that the incident would have been avoided if Ford had designed alternative means (such as the later-added metal grates) to guard the pit while the guard rails were temporarily removed. But the fact that the guard rails’ temporary removal was necessary in order to clean the drag flask from run-out is an additional factor evincing a purpose other than an intent to injure Rudisill. Cf. Shanklin v. McDonald’s USA, LLC, No. 2008 CA 00074, 2009 WL 154034, at  (Ohio Ct. App. Jan. 20, 2009) (noting that removing the microwave’s housing unit was necessary to repair the microwave, and the housing unit was replaced after the repair). 2. The testimony of two Ford employees. Rudisill nevertheless claims that two Ford employees testified in their depositions that “Ford was aware of the dangers posed by exposed floor openings and that the floor opening in which Mr. Rudisill was injured should have been guarded with a floor grate to protect Mr. Rudisill from falling into the pit.” The first part of Rudisill’s contention is not supported by the record. Nowhere in the deposition pages cited does either employee say that Ford “was aware” of any dangers. As for the rest, here are the pertinent excerpts from the depositions of the two employees in question (Senior Safety Engineer Christina Redella and Safety Engineer Jason Kriebel): Q. [R]emoving the drag flask from this operation on or about February 2nd, 2007 required the removal of the long barrier guard, true? A. It did. . . . ... Q. And we didn’t have a grate in place, true? A. Correct. Q. So that was a required aspect of the job in removing the drag flask? A. It should have been. Q. I’m sorry? A. The grating, it should have been. (Redella Dep. 74-75) No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 22 Q. Putting a grate over the hole before the flask is being removed and after the vertical rail guard is removed is not a real complex solution; can we agree with that? A. I would agree. Most cases it’s probably not a real mind boggling task or action to take. (Kriebel Dep. 123) Redella’s statement that the grating “should have been” a required aspect of the job is nothing more than her opinion, in hindsight, of what the best safety practice should have been. Such an opinion is at most evidence of negligence (and not particularly strong evidence at that), and certainly would not be sufficient to enable a reasonable jury to find a deliberate intent to injure. Kriebel’s testimony is even less relevant. Whether the installation of metal grates would be “complex” or “mind boggling” is in no way probative of Ford’s intent to injure. In sum, the testimony of the Ford employees identified by Rudisill would not permit a reasonable jury to find that Ford intended to injure him. 3. OSHA guidelines or warnings. Rudisill’s argument about OSHA is less than clear. His opening brief states that “Ford had been warned of the hazards associated with exposed floor openings during an OSHA wall-to-wall review in 1998—nine years prior to Mr. Rudisill’s accident.” But Rudisill never actually cites to or provides any OSHA documents. The same goes for Ford’s Guidelines, Responsibilities, and Safe Practices (“GRASP”) handbook, which is often referenced but never specifically cited or provided. We are unable to draw any conclusions from these documents without seeing their contents. The only clue provided by Rudisill as to the import of either OSHA or GRASP is through the deposition testimony of the two Ford safety engineers. The pertinent testimony from Kriebel is to the effect that he “believe[s]” the GRASP handbook “does mention” something about “exposed floor openings” and “believe[s]” that GRASP “instruct[s] employees not to work around exposed floor openings,” but he is “not sure of the specific verbiage.” No reasonable jury could conclude on the basis of such equivocal testimony that Ford intended to injure Rudisill. Even assuming that the No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 23 “exposed floor openings” purportedly discussed in the GRASP handbook include the type of pit that Rudisill fell into, the foregoing testimony is utterly unclear as to what the handbook actually said. Moreover, the failure to follow an instruction in a safety handbook is at most evidence of negligence, not evidence of a specific intent to injure. Rudisill also cites the deposition testimony of Redella to the effect that, at some point in 1998, OSHA told Ford to “have all exposed floor openings covered and/or guarded.” Again, this is at most evidence of negligence. The general (and rather unremarkable) acknowledgment that unguarded floor openings might be dangerous does not show that Ford intended to injure Rudisill in requiring him to perform the specific flask-removal task at issue in the present case. We thus conclude that Rudisill’s vague references to OSHA and GRASP cannot supply the basis for a reasonable jury to find that Ford intended to injure him. 4. Job-safety analysis. The final factor raised by Rudisill to support his claim of an intent to injure is based on references to Ford’s failure to “perform a job safety analysis.” But Rudisill is not specific as to what sort of analysis he thinks that Ford should have performed. Moreover, he has presented no evidence that would connect a presumed failure to conduct a job-safety analysis to a deliberate intent to injure him. In sum, the evidence taken from all four factors together would not enable a reasonable jury to conclude that Ford acted with the deliberate intent to injure Rudisill. Because such intent is an essential element of an intentional-tort claim under Ohio Revised Code § 2745.01, summary judgment for Ford was properly granted. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986) (“[T]he plain language of Rule 56[] mandates the entry of summary judgment . . . against a party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party’s case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial.”). Although this result might seem harsh to an injured employee like Rudisill, it is the result of reasoned public policy. The “social bargain” of workers’ compensation is a two-way street: True, employees give up the ability to bring tort claims on anything less than a demanding showing of intent to injure. But in turn they obtain compensation No. 12-3486 Rudisill et al. v. Ford Motor Co. Page 24 for a variety of injuries, regardless of fault, for which the common law provided no remedy. The tradeoffs inherent in Ohio’s workers’ compensation system for both employers and employees are well described by the Ohio Supreme Court in Kaminski v. Metal & Wire Products Co., 927 N.E.2d 1066, 1071-72 (Ohio 2010), and Stetter v. R.J. Corman Derailment Services, 927 N.E.2d 1092, 1104, 1107-09 (Ohio 2010). One might argue as a matter of policy that this bargain is too one-sided; that the employees got the short end of the stick. But such arguments, whatever their merit, should be addressed to the Ohio legislature rather than to the courts. As it is, the Ohio statute requires evidence of the deliberate intent to injure, and there is no such evidence in the present case.