Gonzalez v. Lamb Weston, Inc.

• Citation: 142 Idaho 120,124 P.3d 996
• Decision Date: 22 November 2005
• Docket Number: No. 30910.,30910.
• Parties: Cecilio GONZALEZ and Herminia Gonzalez, husband and wife, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. LAMB WESTON, INC., a Delaware corporation, Defendant-Respondent, and Brask Enterprises, Inc., a Texas corporation; Sebright Products, Inc., a Michigan corporation; and John Doe and Jane Doe, husband and wife, I through X, and Business Entities I through X, Defendants.
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

124 P.3d 996

142 Idaho 120

Cecilio GONZALEZ and Herminia Gonzalez, husband and wife, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. LAMB WESTON, INC., a Delaware corporation, Defendant-Respondent, and Brask Enterprises, Inc., a Texas corporation; Sebright Products, Inc., a Michigan corporation; and John Doe and Jane Doe, husband and wife, I through X, and Business Entities I through X, Defendants.

No. 30910.

Supreme Court of Idaho, Twin Falls, November 2005 Term.

November 22, 2005.

Pedersen and Jackson, Twin Falls, for appellants. Jarom A. Whitehead argued.

Moore & Baskin, LLP, Boise, for respondent. Michael W. Moore argued.

EISMANN, Justice.

This is an appeal from a partial summary judgment dismissing this action as to Lamb Weston, Inc., because it was the statutory employer of the injured plaintiff and therefore immune from liability under Idaho Code § 72-223(1). We affirm the judgment of the district court.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Lamb Weston, Inc., (Lamb Weston) makes and packages frozen potato products at its Twin Falls plant for sale to retailers, food service suppliers, and others. The plant operations generate non-recyclable waste that Lamb Weston must dispose of. It disposes of some of the waste by having its employees haul it to a local transfer station using Lamb Weston equipment. It also contracted with P.S.I. Waste Systems (PSI) to haul waste to the transfer station. Under its contract with PSI, Lamb Weston was required to provide a garbage bin with a forty-yard capacity (the size of a large dump truck) that could be loaded onto a specially designed truck used by PSI. Lamb Weston provided the bin by leasing it from Brask Enterprises, Inc. The bin is enclosed on all sides and attached at one end to a compactor unit. Lamb Weston employees would dump garbage into the compactor, which would compact the trash into the bin through a small opening. When the bin needed to be emptied, a PSI employee would drive to the plant, load the bin onto a truck, and transport it to the transfer station. After emptying the bin at the transfer station, the PSI employee would return it to the Lamb Weston plant.

On October 17, 2002, Cecilio Gonzalez, a PSI employee, drove to the Lamb Weston plant to empty the bin. After loading it onto the PSI truck, Mr. Gonzalez drove to the transfer station, got out of the truck, and removed the safety pin to open the door of the bin. The door immediately flew open, striking Mr. Gonzalez in the face and injuring him. He contends that Lamb Weston employees had packed too much trash into the bin, which was a cause of the door suddenly flying open when the safety pin was pulled.

Mr. Gonzalez and his wife filed this action against Lamb Weston and others seeking to recover damages for personal injury. Lamb Weston moved for summary judgment dismissing it from the lawsuit on the ground that as Mr. Gonzalez's statutory employer, it was immune from liability under Idaho Code § 72-223(1). The district court agreed and entered a partial judgment dismissing this lawsuit as to Lamb Weston. After the district court certified the judgment as final pursuant to Rule 54(b) of the Idaho Rules of Civil Procedure, the Gonzalezes appealed.

II. ANALYSIS

This case is controlled by our recent opinion in Venters v. Sorrento Delaware, Inc., 141 Idaho 245, 108 P.3d 392 (2005). Sorrento Delaware, Inc., (Sorrento) operated a cheese factory which produced a large amount of wastewater, which it had to dispose of. It discharged some of the wastewater into on-site holding ponds and onto farmland surrounding its factory. It also contracted with farmers to dump wastewater into large storage tanks on their properties. The farmers would then use the wastewater for irrigation. Sorrento owned the storage tanks placed on the farmers' properties and contracted with 3-C Trucking to haul wastewater from the factory to the storage tanks. 3-C Trucking hired Mr. Venters to drive one of its tanker trucks. During the pre-dawn hours of his first day of work, he drove a load of wastewater from the cheese factory to the property of one of the farmers. While Mr. Venters was standing near his truck waiting his turn to empty the wastewater into a storage tank, another tanker truck driver who had just emptied his load ran over Mr. Venters, causing fatal injuries. Mr. Venters's widow and son brought a wrongful death action against Sorrento and the farmer. The district court granted summary judgment to both Sorrento and the farmer, dismissing the action. We upheld the dismissal of the action as to Sorrento on the ground that it was Mr. Venters's statutory employer, and therefore immune from liability under Idaho Code § 72-223(1). We stated:

Sorrento qualifies as a statutory employer of Mr. Venters simply because of its contractual relationship with 3-C Trucking. As an employer of a contractor, Sorrento would not have been permitted to avoid liability to Mr. Venters under the Idaho worker's compensation statutes should 3-C Trucking have failed to comply with the worker's compensation statutes.

141 Idaho at 251, 108 P.3d at 398. The same reasoning applies to this case.

Under the Idaho worker's compensation laws, an "employer" is more broadly defined than under the common law. An employee may have more than one employer: the employer who directly hired the employee and a person or entity who, by statute, is also held to be the employer for the purposes of worker's compensation. Struhs v. Protection Technologies, Inc., 133 Idaho 715, 992 P.2d 164 (1999). Although these "statutory employers" can be held liable for worker's compensation benefits, they also enjoy immunity from liability for common law torts. Robison v. Bateman-Hall, Inc., 139 Idaho 207, 76 P.3d 951 (2003).

Idaho Code § 72-223(1) grants immunity from tort liability to two categories of statutory employers: (1) "those employers described in section 72-216, Idaho Code, having under them contractors or subcontractors who have in fact complied with the provisions of section 72-301, Idaho Code" and (2) "the owner...