Court Opinion

ID: 9781632
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:56:56.784146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:29.142762
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
with whom WINCHESTER, V.C.J., joins, dissenting in part.
¶ 1 I would not answer today the first question posed by the certifying court in advance of receiving its order assuring us that the plaintiffs common-law tort claim is not barred against the two defendants herein *582either (a) by plaintiffs earlier selection of the compensation remedy which she prosecuted to a successful conclusion1 or (b) by issue preclusion2 resulting from the compensation award’s final order that finds the decedent’s on-the-job injury was “accidental” (as opposed to inflicted willfully or in any other manner sufficient to pierce the employer’s statutory § 12 immunity3 from extra-compensation liability for the same harm).4 While my dissent targets mainly the possibility that the first federal-court question is mooted by a two-fold bar, I write to explain where I would place the line of demarcation that separates an employer’s § 12 immunity from its tort liability.
I
THE FIRST QUESTION CERTIFIED BY THE FEDERAL COURT MAY BE MOOTED BY A TWO-FOLD BAR— AN ELECTION OF REMEDIES OR ISSUE PRECLUSION
¶ 2 The first legal question posed to us— whether the employer is protected by the § 12 immunity from liability in tort — presents for our resolution a proposition of public law.5 When confronting a matter of public law, this court is utterly free to choose sua sponte its own framework of dispositive legal problem-solving techniques (theories and remedial avenues) to arrive at the most appropriate answer.6 If either of the two bars *583described by this dissent is invocable against either defendant, that defendant’s § 12 immunity becomes an academic issue. Once it is clear that the claim is not actionable against a party, the § 12 immunity interposed by that party is beyond the court’s need to notice. No party is ever called upon to raise its immunity from liability against a claim of another which is nonac-tionable.
¶ 3 The barrier of (1) plaintiffs earlier remedy selection of compensation law and her successful prosecution of benefits’ recovery7 and/or (2) of issue preclusion by a Workers’ Compensation Court’s finding that decedent’s on-the-job injury was “accidental” must be judicially removed as unavailable before this court can be called upon to consider the immediate employer’s and the potential “principal employer’s” § 12 immunity from tort liability. The latter employer, once found to stand in the status of principal employer, would fully enjoy the benefits of both legal barriers, if otherwise applicable.
II
THE EMPLOYER’S WORKERS’ COMPENSATION IMMUNITY FROM LIABILITY SHOULD BE PLACED AT AND ALONG THE WILLFUL TORT LINE
¶ 4 An employer’s § 12 immunity from tort liability should continue to stand where it has stood for nearly a century — at the willful tort line.8 The court today reduces the outer limit of immunity to coincide with the reach of the so-called foreign doctrine of “substantial certainty.”9 The latter shrinks an employer’s immunity by adding liability for the torts of gross negligence and reckless indifference. This doctrine is neither in harmony with Oklahoma’s historical antecedents nor with its constitutional jurisprudence which gave birth to workers’ compensation liability.10
¶ 5 The 1915 workers’ compensation law abolished the employee’s common-law negligence action against the employer and the latter’s corollary defenses of contributory negligence and assumption of the risk.11 In conformity with this tradeoff, workers obtained the benefit of employers’ fault-free liability for on-the-job-injuries and employers received protection from answerability in tort.12 In an early attack on the Act’s constitutional validity, the court in Adams v. Iten Biscuit Co.13 upheld the compensation law’s exclusive remedy for work-related accidental injuries. Iten teaches that willful and intentional injuries, whether inflicted by the employer or employee, are not to be considered accidental and hence must be excluded from coverage. As a result of this early twentieth-century tradeoff, the obligations that the workers’ compensation regime imposes on employers are absolutely inseparable from the perimeter of immunity that compensation law confers.14
*584¶ 6 Torts of gross negligence that are based on reckless indifference to the safety of an individual authorize the defense of contributory negligence, but fall short of an intentional wrong’s equivalent.15 I would leave the immunity line where it should be and where it has stood correctly placed — at the demarcation that separates torts in which contributory negligence is a defense from torts in which contributory negligence is not a defense. An employer would enjoy § 12 immunity if the tort is in the subclass of those to which contributory negligence may be interposed as a defense.16 Where the law would not permit a defense of contributory negligence, the immunity would not avail because the harm could not be deemed accidental.17
Ill
SUMMARY
¶ 7 Because I concur only in the text of the court’s answer to the second question, I would confine today’s opinion to answering that question alone. I dissent from the court’s answer to the first question.
¶ 8 I would leave within the § 12 immunity all cases in which the tort authorizes the employer’s defense of contributory negligence. My view faithfully follows the tradeoff analysis that is the very cornerstone of this court’s jurisprudence which provided constitutional approval for the workers’ compensation regime.

. Included in the record from the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma is Exhibit 1 (order of the Workers’ Compensation Court) to UNICCO's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment. That order, entered 13 October 1999, awarded benefits to Gwendolyn Kay Parret for the death of her husband, Glenn Par-ret. In the Matter of the Death of Glenn Parret, Deceased, Gwendolyn Kay Parret, Claimant v. UNICCO Service Co., Respondent, Travelers Insurance, Insurance Carrier (Workers’ Compensation Court, No. 99-11585A). Bridgestone/Fire-stone, Inc., d/b/a Dayton Tire, a defendant in the federal-court litigation, was not a party to the compensation claim.

. This court recognized in Anco Mfg. & Supply Co. v. Swank, 1974 OK 78, 524 P.2d 7, 10, that the issue preclusion doctrine may be asserted defensively. The phrase " 'defensive use' of the doctrine ... means that a stranger to the judgment, ordinarily the defendant in the second action, relies upon a former judgment as conclusively establishing in his favor an issue which he must prove as an element of his defense." Anco Mfg., supra, 524 P.2d at 10 (citations omitted). There, issue preclusion was invoked as a defensive bar to relitigation of an issue then in the workers’ compensation court, which had been determined (in favor of the party to be estopped) in an earlier district court proceeding.
"Collateral estoppel [issue preclusion], like the related doctrine of res judicata [claim preclusion], has the dual purpose of protecting litigants from the burden of relitigating an identical issue with the same party or his privy and of promoting judicial economy by preventing needless litigation.” Parklane Hosiery Co., Inc. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 326, 99 S.Ct. 645, 649, 58 L.Ed.2d 552 (1979). In furtherance of those policies, the U.S. Supreme Court has, in recent years, broadened the scope of the doctrine of issue preclusion beyond its common-law limits. It has done so by abandoning the requirement of mutuality of parties (Blonder-Tongue Laboratories, Inc. v. University of Illinois Foundation, 402 U.S. 313, 91 S.Ct. 1434, 28 L.Ed.2d 788 (1971)) and by conditionally approving the "offensive” use of issue preclusion by a nonparty to a prior lawsuit.

. Immunity from tort liability is conferred upon employers by the provisions of 85 O.S.2001 § 12, whose text provides:
"The liability prescribed in Section 11 of this title shall be exclusive and in place of all other liability of the employer and any of his employees ... for such injury, loss of services, or death, to the employee, or the spouse, personal representative, parents, or dependents of the employee, or any other person....”
(emphasis added).

. According to the award's findings by the Workers' Compensation Court, the worker was in the employ of UNICCO Service Co. on 20 July 1999 when he "sustained an accidental personal injury arising out and in the course of ... employment with the respondent, as a result of which ... [he] died on July 22, 1999.” In the Matter of the Death of Glenn Parret, Deceased, supra note 1 (order entered 13 October 1999) (emphasis added).

. Amos v. Spiro Public Schools, 2004 OK 4, ¶ 7, 85 P.3d 813, 816 (citing Special Indemnity Fund v. Reynolds, 1948 OK 14, ¶ 5, 188 P.2d 841, 842); Reynolds v. Special Indemn. Fund, 1986 OK 64, ¶ 14, 725 P.2d 1265, 1270; National Gypsum Co. v. Brewster, 1969 OK 185, K22, 461 P.2d 593, 596.

. "When resolving a public-law question, we are free to choose sua sponte the dispositive public-law theory although the wrong one is advanced.” Yeatman v. Northern Oklahoma Resource Center of Enid, 2004 OK 27, V 15, 89 P.3d 1095, 1101; Amos v. Spiro Public Schools, supra note 5 at ¶ 7, 85 P.3d at 816; Davis v. B.F. Goodrich, 1992 OK 14, ¶ 3, 826 P.2d 587, 592-93 (Opala, C.J., concurring)(citing Reynolds v. Special Indemn. Fund, supra note 5 at ¶ 14, 725 P.2d at 1270).

. Pryse Monument Co. v. District Court, 1979 OK 71, 595 P.2d 435, 437-38, teaches that an employee who has two available remedies for the same injury and has prosecuted one of them to conclusion is barred from resort to the other remedy.

. Oklahoma first enacted workers’ compensation law in 1915. 1915 Okl.Sess.Laws, Ch. 246, p. 574. See Adams v. Iten Biscuit Co., 1917 OK 47, 162 P. 938, 940-41. Modern workers' compensation statutes remove the element of fault as a baseline requirement for ascribing liability for work-connected injuries and replace it with the concept of strict responsibility. For a discussion of strict liability’s historical development, see Vernon Palmer, A General Theory of the Inner Structure of Strict Liability: Common Law, Civil Law, and Comparative Law, 62 Tul.L.Rev. 1303-1355 (1988).

. See, e.g., Beauchamp v. Dow Chem. Co., 427 Mich. 1, 398 N.W.2d 882, 893 (1986); Woodson v. Rowland, 329 N.C. 330, 407 S.E.2d 222, 229 (1991).

. Adams v. Iten Biscuit Co., supra note 8 at 940-41.

. 1915 Okl.Sess.Laws, Ch. 246, p. 574; Adams v. Iten Biscuit Co., supra note 8 at 940-41.

. As the plain language of 85 O.S.2001 § 11 makes clear, all accidental on-the-job injuries must be channeled through the Workers' Compensation Court, but claims for intentional on-the-job delicts may be vindicated outside of the workers’ compensation regime.

. Adams v. Iten Biscuit Co., supra note 8 at 940-41.

. The court reaffirmed the teachings of Adams v. Iten Biscuit Co., supra note 8, in United States Zinc Co. v. Ross, 1922 OK 247, 208 P. 805, 806, stating that workers' compensation is an exclusive remedy "unless the injury was willfully inflicted by the employer." The court cited Adams v. Iten Biscuit Co. in Hull v. Wolfe, 1964 OK 118, 393 P.2d 491, 493, stating: "This Court declared the Act was intended to cover all accidental injuries, but did not include willful or intentional injuries whether inflicted by the employer or the employee, since [they are] ... not accidental.” (emphasis added). Both the terms of 85 O.S.2001 § 12 and Oklahoma's jurisprudence bar contributory negligence as a defense against the claim. The text of 85 O.S.2001 § 11 clearly provides that an injury is compensable "without regard to fault” on the worker's part.

. Graham v. Keuchel, 1993 OK 6, 847 P.2d 342, 357. Gross negligence is characterized as reckless indifference to the consequences. Wootan v. Shaw, 1951 OK 307, ¶22, 237 P.2d 442, 444.

. Adams v. Iten Biscuit Co., supra note 8 at 940-41.

. To give rise to a tort claim that will stand dehors compensation law, an intentional on-the-job tort must be the product of the employer's knowing and willful intent to cause injury. De-Anda v. AIU Insurance, 2004 OK 54, ¶ 10, 98 P.3d 1080 (Opala, V.C.J., concurring); Pursell v. Pizza Inn Inc., 1990 OK CIV APP 4 ¶ 3, 786 P.2d 716, 717; Roberts v. Barclay, 1962 OK 38 ¶ 4, 369 P.2d 808, 809. Id. at ¶ 32-34, 435-36. The inflicted injury must be neither one that is in the normal employee/employer relationship nor one that stems from a risk directly related to the employee's service. Id. at ¶ 34, at 436. Because the workers' compensation quid pro quo eliminated fault as a basis for on-the-job-injury liability, the fact that harm inflicted upon the worker was the product of an employer's reckless indifference is irrelevant as long as the resulting harm was from an employment-related risk. Harrington v. Certified Systems Inc., 2001 OK CIV APP 53 ¶ 34, 45 P.3d 430, 436.