Tyger v. Precision Drilling Corp.
| Decision Date | 25 March 2022 |
| Docket Number | 4:11-CV-01913 |
| Citation | 594 F.Supp.3d 626 |
| Parties | Rodney TYGER, et al., Plaintiffs, v. PRECISION DRILLING CORP. et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania |
Joshua S. Boyette, Justin L. Swidler, Richard S. Swartz, Swartz Swidler LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ, Travis Martindale-Jarvis, Swartz Swidler, LLC, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiffs Rodney Tyger, Shawn Wadsworth.
Joshua S. Boyette, Justin L. Swidler, Nicholas D. George, Richard S. Swartz, Swartz Swidler LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ, Travis Martindale-Jarvis, Pro Hac Vice, Swartz Swidler, LLC, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiffs Neil Heidelbach, John Harrower, Mike Fouillard, David Howard.
Joshua S. Boyette, Justin L. Swidler, Nicholas D. George, Richard S. Swartz, Swartz Swidler LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ, Travis Martindale-Jarvis, Swartz Swidler, LLC, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiffs Shaun Wadsworth, Rodney Tyger.
Mark T. Phillis, Pro Hac Vice, Littler Mendelson, PC, Pittsburgh, PA, Michael C. Crow, Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP, Houston, TX, for Defendant Precision Drilling Corp.
Mark T. Phillis, Pro Hac Vice, Marcy L. McGovern, Terrence H. Murphy, Pro Hac Vice, Littler Mendelson, P.C., Pittsburgh, PA, Michael C. Crow, Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP, Houston, TX, for Defendant Precision Drilling Oilfield Services, Inc.
Mark T. Phillis, Pro Hac Vice, Emilie R. Hammerstein, Marcy L. McGovern, Terrence H. Murphy, Pro Hac Vice, Littler Mendelson, P.C., Jeremy A. Mercer, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP, Pittsburgh, PA, Greg Moore, Pro Hac Vice, Jamila S. Mensah, Kimberly F. Cheeseman, Michael C. Crow, Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP, Houston, TX, Joseph C. Dole, Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP, New York, NY, for Defendant Precision Drilling Company, LP.
"[A] fair day's pay for a fair day's work."1 That was the promise of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. But in practice, this promise has proven easier stated than applied. While the Act generally requires employers to compensate their employees for time they are required to be at work, Congress has carved out two exceptions, one for "travel to and from the location of the employee's ‘principal activity,’ " and the other for "activities that are preliminary or postliminary to that principal activity."2 And this case—involving a class of oil rig workers seeking backpay for time spent walking back and forth from their rigs to change in and out of their steel-toed boots, hard hats, safety glasses, fire retardant coveralls, gloves, and earplugs—implicates both.
Quite a bit then hinges on what "principal activity" encompasses. Though not defined by the statute, the Supreme Court has determined that the term "embraces all activities which are an ‘integral and indispensable part of the principal activities.’ "3 The question here is whether donning and doffing basic personal protective equipment ("PPE") was "integral and indispensable" to the oil rig workers’ principal activities. And that, as I'll explain, turns on whether this PPE guards against workplace hazards that accompany those activities and transcend ordinary risks.4
Because I find that the donning and doffing of the basic PPE at issue here does not meet this standard, I grant Precision Drilling and its various affiliates’ motion for summary judgment on the Plaintiff Employees’ remaining claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Employees’ cross-motion, which conversely asks that I find Precision Drilling liable under the Act, is accordingly denied.
Precision Drilling operates oil and gas drilling rigs.5 The work is intense—rigs are generally staffed by two crews that alternate 12-hour drilling shifts, often for multiple weeks in a row—and it is not free of hazards.6 Indeed, these hazards, and the protection provided by the basic PPE that Employees don and doff each day, are now at the center of this suit.7 I'll begin by detailing the three types of hazards the Employees have homed in on, before addressing the protection this PPE provides.8
The Employees begin by highlighting an array of mechanical risks their job entails, most of which Precision Drilling acknowledges.9 The Employees note that their eyes may be exposed to pieces of metal, dirt, and dust; that their hands may be "pinche[d], burn[ed], blister[ed], bruise[d], [or scratched]"; and that their toes may be "crushed."10 They also describe how they may suffer hearing loss from workplace noise.11 And they further assert that "cementing ... ‘can cause severe damage’ "—though the Employees leave the magnitude of these risks, and the particularities of the cementing process, otherwise unexplained.12 In addition, the Employees’ statement of facts delves into how during "tripping pipe" operations they are again exposed to danger when they lift, by elevator, drilling materials weighing in the thousands of pounds before "lower[ing] [them] into the bore hole for drilling."13
The Employees relatedly claim that objects may be dropped on their head, with deadly consequences.14 The Employees at first rested this assertion on a statement in Precision Drilling's Safety Manual: "[t]ools dropped from a height have caused significant injuries, including fatalities."15 But in an attachment to their reply brief, they now seek to bolster this claim with documents relating to a workplace incident.16 In particular, the Employees highlight three documents showing that in 2014, a North Dakota-based rig hand was struck by a pin that fell some 80 feet, causing him a serious brain injury
.17
Beyond this North Dakota incident, the Employees’ reply brief attachment also highlight two other accidents, both of which are unrelated to drop risks but seem to fall within the broad ambit of "Mechanical Risks."18 One attachment, a Canadian court decision, describes a 2010 incident in Alberta, Canada, where a rig hand died from blunt force trauma and cranial fractures during a work process called "tripping out."19 At the same time, two other attachments center on an incident that occurred in the mid-2010s, when a rig hand died after being backed over by a front loader.20
The second category that the Employees highlight is fire and burn risks.21 To start, the Employees emphasize the risk of blowouts, leading to "violent" and "uncontrolled" releases of gas, which in their view create both an "explosion" and "burn risk."22 Precision Drilling takes issues with a few parts of this claim. For one, it contends that the Employees garble the mechanism of the risk, emphasizing correctly that nothing in the testimony that the Employees cite discusses the "risk of explosion."23 The Company further clarifies "that there is not burning risk from drilling fluid in a blowout," the risk, rather, comes only "from the gas that follows it."24 Second, Precision Drilling adds that the Employees’ descriptions lack context and stresses that the cited testimony states that blowouts are "rare."25 Indeed, neither party has drawn the Court's attention to evidence of this sort of event happening on a Precision Drilling rig.
The Employees also note the potential fire and burn risks from diesel fuel, a flash fire causing "combustible" added to oil-based drilling muds, which Precision Drilling uses to lubricate drill bits, remove drilling tailings (rocks and dirt) from the well bore, and prevent well collapses during drilling.26 To support their assertion, the Employees tie together Precision Drilling's Vice President of Operations’ declaration that a common type of drilling mud is an oil-based mud (with the base often being diesel fuel), and a Company Material Safety Data Sheet that states: 27 But Precision Drilling has qualms with theory as well. It counters that the Employees cite nothing showing that diesel is still combustible in drilling mud or that anyone has ever been exposed to a flash fire from it.28
Finally, in this section the Employees return to the risk caused by cementing (also mentioned as a mechanical risk), emphasizing that working "with hot liquids such as cement" may cause burns.29 But once again, the testimony they cite does not shed any light on how likely workers are to touch hot cement during the process.30
Besides these risks, which the Employees highlight in their own statement of facts, they also contend in their response to Precision Drilling's statement of facts that Precision Drilling rig hands "have been badly burned by fires."31 In making this claim, they cite the deposition testimony of Glenn Hoganson, a rig hand with over three decades of experience across some fourteen-odd drilling companies:32
The third category of risk identified by the Employees is their exposure to drilling fluids and hazardous materials.34 At a basic level, the Employees contend that while drilling oil and gas wells, they are exposed to drilling muds—and that these drilling muds are hazardous.35 Their case is built on Precision Drilling's Material Safety Data Sheets, its Safety Manual, and the deposition testimony of its workers and managers.36
The Employees begin by citing the Safety Sheets of chemicals added to the Company's drilling mud: Geltone V,...
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