As is well known, in Ohio and other states, an employee who is injured at his or her place of work receives benefits for lost wages, medical expenses, and lump sum awards for any degree of permanent disability through the administrative process of workers’ compensation regardless of any contributory fault on the part of the employee.
In providing these workers’ compensation benefits to the injured employee, the employer is generally immune from suit. Ohio and many states, however, have either by court decision or statutory legislation have allowed employees to not only receive their workers’ compensation benefits, but also have the right to sue their employer and recover the full gamut of so-called “tort damages” if they can show that their injury was caused by the employer’s “intentional” conduct.
Reminger’s Appellate Advocacy Practice Group had the privilege of representing ThyssenKrupp Materials in such an intentional tort action asserted by an employee which arose from a workplace injury involving a side-loader forklift vehicle. The intentional tort claim was subject to R.C. 2745.01 as amended on April 7, 2005. We were successful in obtaining a summary judgment on behalf of ThyssenKrupp on the grounds that the employee did not present evidence to support the requisite element that the employer acted with “deliberate intent” to injure as required under R.C. 2745.01(A) and (B), and/or did not establish that ThyssenKrupp “deliberately removed” an equipment safety guard, such as would give rise to a claim under R.C. 2745.01(C). The Eighth District Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s ruling, concluding that: (1) the statutory definition of the term “substantially certain” to mean “deliberate intent to injure” was the product of an unintended Scrivenor’s error; and (2) that an employee could prove the employer’s deliberate intent to injure through evidence of what “a reasonably prudent employer would believe.”
The Ohio Supreme Court reversed the appellate court’s judgment holding that the legislature’s definition of the term “substantially certain” was not the product of an unintended Scrivenor’s error. The Houdek Court confirmed that the legislature defined the term “substantially certain” to mean that the employer acts with deliberate intent to injure in an effort to significantly curtail an employee’s access to common-law damages for what is traditionally referred to as a“substantially certain”employer intentional tort. Equally important, the Ohio Supreme Court confirmed that the employee’s burden to establish the requisite element of “deliberate intent” may not be established by proof of “what a reasonable prudent employer would believe.”
In sum, the Houdek decision clarifies the distinction between an accidental workplace injury which is subject to the exclusive remedy embodied in the Ohio Workers’ Compensation system and a true “intentional tort” which is limited to those circumstances which demonstrate that the employer acted with a deliberate intent to cause injury.
Should anyone have any questions with respect to this decision, or workers’ compensation, or any aspect of employment practices liability, please do not hesitate to call one of our Employment Practices Liability Practice Group members.
