Federal: Intentional Tort Claim Fails Under Michigan Law

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment in favor of an employer that had been sued by a deceased employee’s estate, finding that the estate could not prevail under the intentional-tort exception to Michigan’s workers’ compensation exclusive remedy provision [Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 418.131(1)]. The deceased was killed when a 1600-pound bag of materials fell from a mezzanine while being stacked by a forklift operator. The court indicated that while the employer knew employees used a particular forklift method that contributed to the accident and also knew that employees walked in the restricted area beneath the mezzanine, in spite of being told not to do so, there was no knowledge an injury was “certain to occur.”

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Barnes v. Sun Chemical Corp., 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 15632 (6th Cir., Aug. 22, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 103.04.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law