The Idaho Supreme Court has ruled the family of a woman killed when her hair got caught in a drive shaft at a seed plant cannot sue for negligence, defective product, and other claims because the state’s exclusive remedy provision bars them from tort litigation.
63-year-old Francisca Gomez was cleaning under a seed-sifting table during her shift at wholesale seed distributor Crookham Company in Caldwell in January 2016 when she was killed. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration subsequently investigated Crookham and issued “serious” violations to the company because it exposed its employees to the unguarded drive shaft without implementing lockout-tagout procedures.
OSHA had previously cited Crookham for violating machine guard safety standards and lockout-tagout protocol with its former picking tables. However, a newly designed picking table where Gomez had been working did not have a fully guarded drive shaft and Crookham did not perform the required lockout-tagout procedures while employees cleaned the table.
In 2016, the Gomez family filed their complaint and demand for jury trial under nine causes of action, including negligence, and defective product design. In 2017, the district court dismissed the suit, explaining the claims were barred by the exclusive remedy rule of workers compensation law.
Thursday’s high court ruling affirmed the trial court’s determination that exclusive remedy barred the lawsuit, because the family received worker’s compensation benefits for Gomez’s death. The product liability claim also did not hold as Crookham is not the manufacturer of the picking table. (businessinsurance.com)
