Hedglin v. Stahl Specialty Co., WD
| Decision Date | 09 May 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. WD,WD |
| Parties | Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 14,235 Marsha HEDGLIN, Terry Hedglin, Jr., Christie Hedglin, and Tara Hedglin, Appellants, v. STAHL SPECIALTY COMPANY, and Dale Corkran, Respondents. 49613. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
David M. Mayer, Kansas City, for appellants.
Terry J. Brady, and George P. Coughlin, Kansas City, for respondent Stahl Specialty Co.
Robert G. Russell, and J. Christopher Spangler, Sedalia, for respondent Dale Corkran.
Before SPINDEN, P.J., and ULRICH and SMART, JJ.
The appellants in this wrongful death action ask this court to recognize "the dual capacity doctrine" which would permit them to maintain this action although they have already received benefits under Missouri's workers' compensation statutes. We decline to recognize the doctrine and affirm the trial court's dismissal of the appellants' suit against Stahl Specialty Company. We reverse, however, the trial court's dismissal of their suit against Dale Corkran, a supervisor at Stahl Specialty who, the appellants contend, acted outside the scope of his employment and caused the death of Terry L. Hedglin.
Hedglin died on July 13, 1992, after he fell into a vat of scalding water while working at Stahl Specialty's plant in Kingsville. 1 The appellants contend that Hedglin fell into a vat while carrying out the orders of his supervisor, Dale Corkran. They contend that Stahl Specialty designed, manufactured and assembled the vat.
Hedglin's wife and children sued Stahl Specialty and Corkran on January 19, 1994. They amended their petition twice to allege in Count I that Stahl Specialty was liable for Hedglin's death under a theory of strict liability. They averred that Stahl Specialty acted "in a dual capacity." It not only was Hedglin's employer, but it "manufactured, designed, assembled and built [the] cooling vat, not only for use in its own facilities, but for distribution to third parties." They alleged that Stahl Specialty's manufacture, design and assembly of the vat was "dangerously defective." In Count II, they pleaded a cause of action against Corkran, accusing him of "deliberately, intentionally, and in conscious disregard for the safety of [Hedglin], [by] subject[ing] [Hedglin] to the extreme and unreasonable risk of injury and death." They asserted that Corkran "ordered and directed [Hedglin] to undertake responsibilities which created a separate and extreme risk of injury and death, far beyond that anticipated or contemplated by the ordinary duties and responsibilities of [Hedglin's] position of employment."
On March 31, 1994, the trial court dismissed the petition. The clerk's notice of the dismissal stated that the bases for the court's ruling were "the reasons stated in the Suggestions in Support of [Stahl Specialty's and Corkran's] Motions [to dismiss]." Those reasons included immunity from suit because of the provisions of Missouri's workers' compensation statutes and the appellants' failure to state a claim for which relief could be granted.
In their appeal, the appellants ask this court to rule that if they can establish that Stahl Specialty was not only Hedglin's employer but also the designer, manufacturer, and distributor of the vat into which Hedglin fell, it should be able to sue Stahl Specialty under both a theory of tort liability and the workers' compensation statutes. They ask us to follow the courts of California and Ohio in recognizing what they term the dual capacity doctrine. The situations addressed in those cases, however, are much different than the circumstances surrounding Hedglin's injury. Even if we were to adopt the dual capacity doctrine, this would not be the proper case for its application.
The leading case recognizing the dual capacity doctrine is Duprey v. Shane, 39 Cal.2d 781, 249 P.2d 8 (banc 1952). The plaintiff in that case was injured in the course and scope of her employment as a nurse at a chiropractic clinic. The clinic's chiropractors treated her injury, but, because of negligence, aggravated her injury. The court concluded that workers' compensation statutes did not bar her from suing the clinic for tort liability. The court reasoned:
[O]n principle and logic it would seem that it should make no difference to the liability of the doctor for malpractice whether the attending doctor is the employer or an insurance doctor. This fact should not affect the legal rights of the employee.... There seems to be no logical reason why the employer-doctor, when he undertakes to treat the industrial injury, should not be responsible in a civil action for his negligent acts in treating that injury.... In treating the injury [the chiropractor] did not do so because of the employer-employee relationship, but did so as an attending doctor, and his relationship to * * * [plaintiff] was that of doctor and patient.
... It is true that the law is opposed to the creation of a dual personality, where to do so is unrealistic and purely legalistic. But where ... it is perfectly apparent that the person involved--[the chiropractor]--bore towards his employee two relationships--that of employer and that of a doctor--there should be no hesitancy in recognizing this fact as a fact. Such a conclusion, in this case, is in precise accord with the facts and is realistic and not legalistic. We conclude, therefore, than an employee injured in an industrial accident may sue the attending physician for malpractice if the original injury is aggravated as a result of the doctor's negligence, and that such right exists whether the attending doctor is the insurance doctor or the employer.
The Supreme Court of Ohio adopted the reasoning of Duprey in Guy v. Arthur H. Thomas Company, 55 Ohio St.2d 183, 378 N.E.2d 488 (1978). In that case, a hospital laboratory technician suffered mercury poisoning while working in the hospital's cardiology department. Hospital physicians treated her, but their negligent failure to diagnose her properly aggravated her condition. Although she had collected workers' compensation benefits, she sued the hospital for tort liability. The Guy court permitted the tort suit. It reasoned:
The genesis of workers' compensation in the United States ... was the inability of the common-law remedies to cope with modern industrialism and its inherent injuries to workers.... Implicit therefrom is the concept that workers' compensation statutes relate generally to the legal connection or relationship between employer and employee. Perhaps best expressing the no-fault theory of workers' compensation as one essentially of status is the following comment by the Supreme Court of the United States, in Cudahy Packing Co. v. Parramore (1923), 263 U.S. 418, at page 423, 44 S.Ct. 153, at page 154, 68 L.Ed. 366:
....
In juxtaposition, where the employer-employee relationship does not exist, workers' compensation has not been found to affect the right of a workman to sue a third-party tortfeasor for injuries received in the course of his employment through negligence.
....
We find the logic expressed in Duprey, ... to be compelling[.] Appellee's argument is that Ohio's workers' compensation requires us to ignore the fact that appellee hospital was not only the employer of appellant, but also the treating hospital and, as such, charged with the obligations that arise in a hospital-patient relationship. The anomalous result urged by appellee is that the workers' compensation laws of Ohio require appellee hospital's liability to be distinguished upon whether the malpractice that aggravates a compensable injury was bestowed upon its hospital employee or any other hospital's employee or, for that matter, another's employee.
Id. 378 N.E.2d at 490-92 (emphasis in the original).
The appellants contend that the same rationale should be applied to their case. They argue that Stahl Specialty acted in two capacities: It not only designed, manufactured, and assembled the cooling vat for its own use, but it distributed them to third parties. 2 They assert that they should not be restricted to a workers' compensation remedy because they pleaded a cause of action against Stahl Specialty "in a capacity separate from its role as an employer; i.e., [they pleaded] a cause of action for strict liability against [Stahl Specialty] for the manufacture, design and assembly of the defective cooling vat."
They misunderstand the dual capacity doctrine as enunciated in the Duprey and Guy cases. As the Guy court explained:
It has been stated that the decisive test of dual-capacity is not with how separate the employer's second function is from the first, but whether the second function generates obligations unrelated to those flowing from the first, that of an employer. 2A Larson, [Workmen's Compensation Law 14-112, § 72.80 (1976) ].
378 N.E.2d at 491. Even if we were to recognize the dual capacity doctrine, it would not be applicable to the appellants' case as explained by the Guy court because, as the appellants plead their case, Stahl Specialty's function as vat distributor did not generate any obligations to Hedglin different than Stahl Specialty's obligations to him as employer.
Stahl Specialty's obligation to Hedglin as employer was to...
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