Court Opinion

ID: 9351791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-03 19:00:29.517988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:02:59.652079
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-30413        Document: 00516594804             Page: 1      Date Filed: 01/03/2023

             United States Court of Appeals
                  for the Fifth Circuit
                                                                               United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                        Fifth Circuit

                                      No. 22-30413                                    FILED
                                    Summary Calendar                            January 3, 2023
                                                                                 Lyle W. Cayce
                                                                                      Clerk
   Herman Populars, Jr.,

                                                                    Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                            versus

   Trimac Transportation, Incorporated,

                                                                   Defendant—Appellee.

                     Appeal from the United States District Court
                         for the Middle District of Louisiana
                                USDC No. 3:19-cv-316

   Before Clement, Graves, and Wilson, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam:*
         Herman Populars, Jr., appeals the district court’s grant of summary
   judgment to Trimac Transportation, Inc. We AFFIRM.
                                               I
         The parties here tell the same, undisputed tale. Trimac runs a tanker
   cleaning facility in Geismer, Louisiana. Populars, employed there as a “wash

         *
             This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 22-30413         Document: 00516594804             Page: 2      Date Filed: 01/03/2023

                                          No. 22-30413

   rack technician,” was tasked with washing tankers brought into the facility.
   To do so, he would start by draining the heel—the tanker’s few remaining
   gallons—into a five-gallon bucket. He would then empty that bucket into 55-
   gallon steel drums. This was usually uneventful.
          On March 16, 2018, however, it was not. Populars first drained a
   tanker correctly labeled as containing methylene diphenyl diisocyanate
   (MDI). He then did the same for a second tanker, one also marked—both in
   Trimac’s computer safety system and on a placard on the tanker itself—as
   containing MDI. 1 But when Populars drained the supposed-MDI into the
   same steel drum as before, the chemicals exploded, injuring him. It turns out
   that the second tanker contained not MDI, but monoethanolamine (MEA).
   The two—MDI and MEA—are highly reactive.
         Populars sued Trimac, alleging that the company intentionally
   harmed him. The district court eventually awarded Trimac summary
   judgment, finding that Populars failed to show that Trimac intended his
   harm. Populars now appeals.
                                                II
         We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo and
   view the record in the light most favorable to the non-movant. In re La.
   Crawfish Producers, 852 F.3d 456, 462 (5th Cir. 2017). Summary judgment is
   appropriate where “the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to
   any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”
   Id. (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a)).
          Since Trimac employs Populars, he would ordinarily be entitled only
   to worker’s compensation benefits as remedy for a workplace injury. See La.

          1
              The placard was placed not by Trimac, but by the “generator of the fluid.”

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                                      No. 22-30413

   Rev. Stat. § 23:1032(A)(1)(a). However, if Populars’s injury resulted
   from “an intentional act,” Populars is permitted to sue in tort. See id.
   § 23:1032(B). To be an intentional act, the actor must either consciously
   desire the physical result of his act, or must know that the result is
   substantially certain to follow from his conduct, his desire notwithstanding.
   See Cole v. State Dep’t of Pub. Safety & Corr., 825 So. 2d 1134, 1140 (La. 2002).
          Everyone here agrees that Trimac did not consciously desire to hurt
   Populars. Instead, Populars must show that Trimac knew his injury was
   substantially certain to result from its actions. Substantial certainty, in this
   context, “requires more than a reasonable probability that an injury will
   occur,” but rather that such injury was “inevitable or incapable of failing.”
   Stanley v. Airgas-Southwest, Inc., 171 So. 3d 915, 916 (La. 2015) (per curiam)
   (citations and quotations omitted). As Louisiana courts have made clear,
   “mere knowledge and appreciation of a risk does not constitute intent, nor
   does reckless or wanton conduct . . . .” Id. at 917 (quotations and citation
   omitted). That an employer believes “someone may, or even probably will,
   eventually get hurt if a workplace practice is continued does not rise to the
   level of intentional tort . . . .” Id. at 916 (quotations and citation omitted).
          Populars’s argument is straightforward. First, he notes that the MEA
   tanker had an illegible safety data sheet but was nevertheless encoded in
   Trimac’s computer system as containing MDI. This means, says Populars,
   that Trimac intentionally coded the tanker as containing MDI, even though
   only the tanker’s placard—and not its data sheet—supported that
   conclusion. Populars then argues that because the tanker actually contained
   MEA, not MDI, his injury was substantially certain to occur because the two
   chemicals are incompatible.
          But there’s a problem with that argument. Populars fails to show that
   Trimac knew it mislabeled the tanker. It is not enough that Trimac

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                                    No. 22-30413

   intentionally coded into its system that the tanker contained MDI. Doing so
   may have been reasonable, negligent, or reckless—none of which sustains a
   suit under § 23:1032(B). Populars instead needed to demonstrate that
   Trimac (or a reasonable company in Trimac’s position) knew this designation
   was wrong, and, therefore, knew that Populars’s injury was inevitable.
   Despite claiming that “Trimac knew it possessed chemicals that would
   produce a violent exothermic reaction when mixed together,” Populars
   points to no evidence to support that assertion. Without any such knowledge,
   Trimac cannot reasonably be said to have intended Populars’s harm.
          All Populars shows is that Trimac followed the tanker’s placard and
   coded it as containing MDI. He does not show how Trimac knew, given those
   actions, that his injury was substantially certain to occur. All told, then, the
   district court did not err in granting Trimac summary judgment.
          AFFIRMED.

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