Williams v. Hoffman/New Yorker, Inc., 3:94CV1458(AHN)

• Decision Date: 26 April 1996
• Docket Number: 3:94CV1930(AHN).,No. 3:94CV1458(AHN),3:94CV1458(AHN)
• Citation: 923 F. Supp. 350
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut
• Parties: John WILLIAMS v. HOFFMAN/NEW YORKER, INC. v. SEICKEL & SONS, INC. John WILLIAMS v. RHEEM MANUFACTURING CO. et al. v. SEICKEL & SONS, INC.

923 F. Supp. 350

John WILLIAMS v. HOFFMAN/NEW YORKER, INC. v. SEICKEL & SONS, INC.

John WILLIAMS v. RHEEM MANUFACTURING CO. et al. v. SEICKEL & SONS, INC.

Nos. 3:94CV1458(AHN), 3:94CV1930(AHN).

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

April 26, 1996.

Madonna A. Sacco, Colleen D. Fries, Bai, Pollock & Dunnigan, Bridgeport, CT, for Plaintiff.

Phyllis M. Pari, Wiggin & Dana, New Haven, CT, J. Kevin Golger, McNamara & Kenney, Bridgeport, CT, for Defendant.

RULING ON THIRD-PARTY DEFENDANT'S MOTIONS TO DISMISS THIRD-PARTY COMPLAINTS

NEVAS, District Judge.

Plaintiff John Williams ("Williams") commenced independent actions pursuant to the Connecticut Product Liability Act, Conn.Gen. Stat. § 52-572m (1988) against Rheem Manufacturing Co. and Rheem Textile Systems, Inc., on the one hand, and Hoffman/New Yorker, Inc., on the other, in Connecticut Superior Court in 1994. The defendants removed the state court actions to the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut on November 15, 1994. See Williams v. Rheem Manufacturing Co., No. 3:94CV1930(PCD); Williams v. Hoffman/New Yorker, Inc., No. 3:94CV1458(AHN). In October 1995, the defendants commenced this third-party action against Seickel & Sons, Inc. ("Seickel") for contribution and indemnification.¹ The cases subsequently were consolidated under Williams v. Hoffman/New Yorker, Inc., No. 3:94CV1458(AHN).

Currently before the court are Seickel's motions to dismiss the third-party complaints pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), Fed.R.Civ.P. For the reasons that follow, Seickel's motions to dismiss the third-party complaints docs. ## 25, 38 are DENIED.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

In deciding a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), the court is required to accept as true all factual allegations in the complaint and must construe any well-pleaded factual allegations in the plaintiff's favor. See Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236, 94 S.Ct. 1683, 1686, 40 L.Ed.2d 90 (1974); Easton v. Sundram, 947 F.2d 1011, 1014-15 (2d Cir.1991), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 911, 112 S.Ct. 1943, 118 L.Ed.2d 548 (1992). A court may dismiss a complaint only where "it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 102, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957); see also Allen v. West-Point-Pepperell, Inc. 945 F.2d 40, 44 (2d Cir.1991). The issue on a motion to dismiss "is not whether the plaintiff will prevail, but whether he is entitled to offer evidence to support his claims." United States v. Yale New Haven Hosp., 727 F.Supp. 784, 786 (D.Conn.1990) (citing Scheuer, 416 U.S. at 236, 94 S.Ct. at 1686).

FACTS

For the purposes of this ruling, the court accepts the following factual allegations contained in the third-party complaints as true.

Williams suffered burns on his arms when a garment press that he was operating at Thomas Cleaners and Chinese Laundry ("Thomas Cleaners") closed on his hands and arms on October 23, 1991. The third-party plaintiffs manufactured the garment press on which Williams was injured. Williams alleges that the garment press was defective and unreasonably dangerous.

Seickel is a New Jersey company that reconditions, assembles, sells, and installs garment presses. Seickel reconditioned the garment press on which Williams was injured and modified it from its original condition. Seickel then sold the garment press to Thomas Cleaners and installed it at the store.

The third-party plaintiffs allege that Seickel was negligent, that its negligence, not theirs, was the direct and immediate cause of the injury, that it had exclusive control of the situation, and that they did not know of Seickel's negligence, had no reason to anticipate it, and reasonably could have relied on Seickel to act without negligence.

DISCUSSION

Seickel moves to dismiss the third-party plaintiffs' indemnity and contribution claims. It first argues that they have failed to allege a necessary element of an indemnity claim under Connecticut law: that an independent legal relationship exists between the indemnitee and the indemnitor. Second, Seickel argues that it cannot be deemed to have exercised "exclusive control," as required under Connecticut law, as a matter of law. Last, Seickel argues that the third-party plaintiffs have failed to allege the requisite type of injury compensable under the Connecticut Product Liability Act and thus cannot maintain their indemnity and contribution claims against it.

Absent a contract to indemnify, a party is entitled to indemnification "only upon proving that the party against whom indemnification is sought either dishonored a contractual provision or engaged in some tortious conduct." Kaplan v. Merberg Wrecking Corp., 152 Conn. 405, 415, 207 A.2d 732 (1965). A party seeking indemnification based on a tort theory of liability must prove that the injury resulted from the "active or primary negligence" of the party against whom reimbursement is sought. See id. To prove "active or primary negligence," and thus to obtain indemnification, a party must establish four elements: (1) that third-party defendant was negligent; (2) that its negligence, not the third-party plaintiff's negligence, was the direct and immediate cause of the injury; (3) that the third-party defendant had exclusive control of the situation; and (4) that the third-party plaintiff did not know of the charged party's negligence, had no reason to anticipate it, and reasonably could have relied on the charged party to act without negligence. See id. at 416, 207 A.2d 732.

The parties agree that a party must allege these four elements to state a claim for indemnification under Connecticut law. The parties, however, disagree about whether Atkinson v. Berloni, 23 Conn.App. 325, 328, 580 A.2d 84 (1990), added a fifth element to the Kaplan test: that "the party seeking indemnification must establish that the alleged indemnitor owed that party a duty based on an independent legal relationship." Id. at 328, 580 A.2d 84.

Seickel argues that, though the Connecticut Supreme Court has not expressly incorporated this factor into Kaplan, the Connecticut Superior Courts have read such a requirement into Kaplan. Consequently, according to Seickel, a third-party plaintiff must allege, and later prove, an independent legal relationship between it and the indemnitor in order to state a claim for indemnification. Seickel argues that, in this case, the third-party plaintiffs have failed to allege that they had any form of independent legal relationship with Seickel from which the court could find that Seickel owed a duty to the third-party plaintiffs. Consequently, according to Seickel, the third-party plaintiffs have failed to state an indemnity claim.

The third-party plaintiffs argue that a party seeking indemnification is not required to allege an independent legal relationship to state an indemnity claim. The third-party plaintiffs contend that the Atkinson court misconstrued the cases upon which it relied in concluding that the existence of an independent legal relationship is a necessary element of an indemnification claim.

The Connecticut case law on this issue is anything but clear, compare Robillard v. Asahi Chemical Indus. Co., No. CV94-0539213-S, 1995 WL 584365, at *9 (Conn.Super.Ct. Sept. 27, 1995) (holding that independent legal relationship between indemnitee and indemnitor required to support indemnification claim) with Commercial Union Ins. Co. v. City of New Haven, No. 243717, 1991 WL 61437, at *4 (Conn.Super.Ct. Apr. 10, 1991) (holding that independent legal relationship between indemnitee and indemnitor not required to support indemnification claim), and the Connecticut Supreme Court has not addressed the issue.

In Atkinson, the court held that an automobile driver involved in an accident with a motorcycle could not assert an indemnity claim against another automobile driver, who he claimed negligently signaled that he could make a left turn, because the alleged indemnitor did not owe a duty of care to the indemnitee other than a general duty to behave as a reasonable person in similar circumstances. Id. at 329, 580 A.2d 84. In reaching this holding, the Atkinson court reasoned that "implicit in indemnification cases is the requirement of an independent legal relationship between the indemnitor and the indemnitee giving rise to a special duty." Id. at 327, 580 A.2d 84. Although the Atkinson court recognized that "most Connecticut indemnification cases do not expressly address the requirement of an independent legal relationship between the parties," it found that "none of the cases allowed a claim for indemnification in the absence of such a duty or relationship." Id. at 328, 580 A.2d 84. It thus concluded that "a party seeking indemnification must establish that the alleged indemnitor owed that party a duty based on an independent legal relationship." Id. at 328, 580 A.2d 84.

In reaching its conclusion that Connecticut case law implicitly required the existence of an independent legal relationship to state an indemnification claim, the court analyzed Ferryman v. Groton, 212 Conn. 138, 561 A.2d 432 (1989), Farm Bureau Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Kohn Bros. Tobacco Co., 141 Conn. 539, 107 A.2d 406 (1954), and Maccarone v. Hawley, 7 Conn.App. 19, 507 A.2d 506 (1986). In Ferryman, Farm Bureau, and Maccarone, the courts held that the Workers' Compensation Act did not bar a third-party action for indemnity against an injured employee's employer if the third-party plaintiff established an independent legal relationship between the third-party plaintiff and the third-party defendant. The courts' focus on the existence of an "independent legal relationship" between the injured employee's employer and the party seeking indemnification occurred in the narrow context of determining whether the exclusive remedy provision of the Workers' Compensation Act barred a third-party action for...