Sedgmer v. McElroy Coal Company, No. 32960 (W.Va. 12/12/2006), 32960.
| Decision Date | 12 December 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 32960.,32960. |
| Parties | William L. Sedgmer, Jr., personally and as next friend of his natural children, Jacob A. Sedgmer, Lucas D. Sedgmer and William L. Sedgmer, III, individually v. McElroy Coal Company, Consolidation Coal Company, Consol, Inc., and Eugene L. Saunders, individually and as agent of the aforementioned corporations. |
| Court | West Virginia Supreme Court |
I dissent because the majority opinion answered a question that was clearly a question of fact designated for trial by a jury. In so doing, the majority opinion has done nothing but make workplaces even more dangerous, and shields employers from responsibility for the employees who are crushed and killed by an employer's gross carelessness.
The undisputed facts in this case are simple. On July 28, 1994 — deep inside a mine owned by the appellee, McElroy Coal Company — appellant William Sedgmer was sitting in one of three lightweight railroad passenger cars (called a "man bus") on the 3 North passway. Mr. Sedgmer was calmly twiddling his thumbs and waiting for a locomotive pulling fully-loaded freight cars to pass by on the main line tracks.
As these freight cars packed with tons of coal crawled upward out of the mine, debris hanging from one of the freight cars snagged an "overhead toggle switch," diverting the freight cars off of the main line and onto the 3 North passway.
Now — and this is a fact the majority opinion overlooks — this was not the first time the coal company had problems with these overhead toggle switches. For example, in 1989, a plank sticking up out of a fully-loaded freight car struck an overhead toggle switch. The tracks moved, and the freight cars jumped the tracks, plowed into a portal, knocked out power to a section of the mine and shut down production. In response to the 1989 wreck, the appellees replaced that one particular overhead toggle switch with a "paw" or "palm" type switch. But none of the other overhead toggle switches — including the one involved in this case — were replaced until after the appellee was mangled in the collision on the 3 North passway.
In this case, after the known-to-be-hazardous overhead toggle switch had been snagged, seventeen rail cars broke loose from the locomotive and careened backward down the tracks into the mine. Instead of rolling backward down the "main" line, the runaway train roared down the 3 North passway. The runaway train plowed into the three sitting passenger cars before Mr. Sedgmer could jump clear, and he suffered severe injuries.
I dissent, in part, because the majority opinion ignores the obvious hazardous nature of the overhead toggle switches that were used throughout the mine. The appellees knew these switches were an accident waiting to happen, but did nothing to replace or protect them from accidental activation.
But I also dissent because of the majority opinion's mangled interpretation of a state regulation and company rules with which the company plainly did not comply, and which form the kernel of the question that the majority opinion should have left to a jury: did the company's failure to comply with the regulation and rules constitute an unsafe working condition known to the appellees?
The bunch of rules at issue in this case essentially said the same thing: inside of a mine, it is dangerous for coal miners to sit inside light-weight rail passenger cars when heavy-weight rail freight cars laden with tons of coal are using the same...
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