 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Imbraguglio v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company3/10/2000
In this wrongful death and survival action the decedent was killed when he fell from a forklift-elevated pallet. The Circuit Court for Baltimore City entered summary judgment in favor of the defendants on the ground that the decedent had assumed the risk of the injury as a matter of law, and, in an unreported opinion, the Court of Special Appeals affirmed on that ground. We issued the writ of certiorari, Imbraguglio v. Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co., 356 Md. 16, 736 A.2d 1064 (1999), primarily to address some fundamental misconceptions in the arguments of the parties concerning the summary judgment process. As to the merits, we shall reverse.
The decedent, Salvatore Imbraguglio (Imbraguglio), was employed by Supermarket Distribution Services, Inc. (SDS) as a supervisor and forklift operator in a grocery warehouse and distribution center where he had worked for thirty-five years. SDS is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Inc. (A & P), one of the Respondents. Imbraguglio's fatal fall occurred in a warehouse which was owned by A & P but managed by the other respondent, Super Fresh Food Markets of Maryland, Inc. (Super Fresh), also a wholly owned subsidiary of A & P.
The petitioner and plaintiff is Ethel Imbraguglio, individually and as personal representative of the Estate of Imbraguglio (Petitioner). This case is a third-party action to the workers' compensation claim which has been resolved. In Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Imbraguglio, 346 Md. 573, 697 A.2d 885 (1997), we held that A & P, which is the workers' compensation self-insurer for its subsidiaries, did not enjoy a defense on that basis to this third-party action and that the record did not establish as a matter of law that Super Fresh was the statutory employer of Imbraguglio under Maryland Code (1991), ยง 9-508 of the Labor and Employment Article. A summary judgment which had been entered in favor of A & P and Super Fresh (Respondents) was reversed in that earlier appeal, and the action was remanded.
Respondents again moved for summary judgment, contending that Imbraguglio had assumed the risk of injury . The circuit court granted that motion for the reasons advanced by Respondents. As we shall see, infra, the memoranda submitted to the circuit court in support of, and in opposition to, summary judgment did not present the evidence most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment as that evidence appeared in Respondents' supporting materials.
The facts that are undisputed are that the warehouse where Imbraguglio worked was very large, containing as many as sixty aisles. Supermarket grocery-department products were moved and stored in the warehouse in their transportation cartons on forklift pallets. Loaded pallets were stored in or on racks that formed the aisles in which forklifts operated. Those racks were vertically and horizontally divided into sections, each of which was the storage receptacle or bin for one loaded pallet. These bins were tiered to a height of at least three bins and were largely open. In addition to the aisle side or face of a bin being open, it appears that there were no solid barriers and no closely spaced, intermittent barriers between bins that adjoined vertically or horizontally, at least in the section of the warehouse with which we are concerned.
Thus, it was possible and, one may infer, not an infrequent occurrence, for one or more cartons of product to become "mispositioned," either by having fallen off of a pallet into a bin on one or another side of the intended storage bin, or by having fallen to a level below that of the intended storage bin. Cartons could fall from a pallet when, for ex
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Maryland Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|