State News : New Jersey

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NWCDN Members regularly post articles and summary judgements in workers’ compensations law in your state.  


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New Jersey

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  856-235-2786

Once again a plaintiff has failed to get past the exclusivity provision in the New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Act.  InEstate of Samuel Sellino and Phyllis Sellino v. Pinto Brothers Disposal, LLC., A-2064-12T1 (App. Div. September 23, 2013), the Appellate Division considered whether an employer could be sued for allegedly removing or bypassing a neutral relay switch leading to a tragic death.

 

Samuel Sellino worked for Pinto Brothers Disposal, LLC (Pinto Brothers).  On October 17, 2008, Sellino was working in Long Beach Township with Chris Pinto.  Sellino was driving the truck, and Pinto was getting on and off the truck to throw brush in to the garbage compactor.  Arriving at one house, Sellino exited the truck, and left the vehicle in drive with the parking brake engaged.  The truck started rolling down the street, and Sellino and Pinto pursued it.  Sellino fell under the wheels of the truck and died. 

 

The company policy was that drivers must remain inside the cab and are not to leave the cab to assist co-workers.  One witness testified that Sellino had been told not to leave the truck before the fatality occurred.

 

            Plaintiffs filed a suit and alleged that Pinto Brothers removed or bypassed a “neutral relay,”  which was an electrical switch that required the vehicle to be in neutral in order for the compactor to function.  The evidence was unclear whether the company did in fact remove or bypass the neutral relay but for purposes of the motion to dismiss the law suit, the court assumed that the company did bypass the switch.  Plaintiff’s expert testified that the death would not have occurred had the neutral safety switch not been bypassed.

 

            Pinto Brothers moved to dismiss the law suit and prevailed at trial, arguing that the suit was barred by the exclusivity provision of the New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Act.  The Appellate Division affirmed that ruling.  The court said, “ . . . bypassing the neutral relay created a risk of injury to its employees.  This falls short of showing that Pinto Brothers acted with knowledge that such action was ‘substantially certain to result in injury or death to the employee.’”  The court noted that just knowing that a workplace is dangerous is not the same as engaging in intentional wrong.

 

            The court also held that the type of accident that happened in this case is a fact of industrial life.  Indeed, Phyllis Sellino, the widow, testified that she was aware of injuries suffered by other garbage truck drivers involving similar factual situations.  Sellino himself was the driver of a truck that ran over an employee in the late 1980s.  “Accordingly, Sellino’s death and the circumstances in which it occurred cannot be considered to be ‘plainly beyond anything the legislature could have contemplated as entitling the employee to recover only under the Compensation Act,’ “ (citations omitted).

 

            This case underscores a recurring theme that intentional harm suits must meet an extremely high burden of proof  in New Jersey and in fact, it is truly only the most rare case that can meet this standard.