 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
SUAREZ v. DICKMONT PLASTICS CORPORATION2/18/1997
the province of the trier of fact." Gorra Realty, Inc. v. Jetmore, 200 Conn. 151, 164, 510 A.2d 440 (1986).
In my view, the jury reasonably could have inferred an actual intent to injure the plaintiff based upon the defendant's workplace policies. The jury heard testimony that the defendant's foreman, Santiago, required that the plaintiff always clean the hot plastic material by placing his bare hands in the machine while it was still operating. Santiago acknowledged in his testimony that the plaintiff was not permitted to use a vacuum cleaner to remove the material because the defendant was concerned about avoiding waste. The plaintiff was also prohibited from stopping the machines prior to the end of his work shift because the defendant wanted to maximize its production.
Furthermore, the jury heard testimony that the plaintiff was reprimanded and threatened for attempting to turn the machines off prior to cleaning the hot material from the machines. The plaintiff testified that Santiago used "very bad words" when he attempted to stop production in order to clean the machine and threatened to terminate his employment. On another occasion, when the plaintiff attempted to clean the machine with a vacuum, Santiago struck the table with a pipe and threatened the plaintiff again. Although the defendant's primary motive in requiring the floormen to scoop the hot material from the machines while the machines were still operating may have been to avoid overtime and material waste, the trier of fact reasonably could have found that the defendant, by requiring the plaintiff to remove plastic with his bare hands, intended the consequences of its orders — that is, to injure the
plaintiff as a result of the defendant's policies. Indeed, the jury made this finding clear by answering in the affirmative the second interrogatory, which provided: "Has the plaintiff established by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant deliberately instructed the plaintiff to injure himself based on its policies regarding the cleaning of the plastic injection molding machine?"
When these facts are read in conjunction with the evidence from the plaintiff's engineer, Michael Shanok, with respect to the description of the machine, the conclusion that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to predicate their decision on actual intent becomes obvious. In Suarez, the machine was described "as a plunger type horizontal injection molding machine used to melt thermoplastic and thermoset rubber polymers into a mold through the action of a hydraulically operated plunger. Shanok further explained that the material is fed from a small, cylindrical hopper with a conical bottom directly into a feed chute. From the chute, the material falls into an injection chamber. From there, an injection plunger is pushed by a hydraulic ram through a barrel surrounded by electrical heating bands. As the plastic is melted within the barrel, it is further pushed
into the mold. The mold is held closed by a damping system, also hydraulically activated. At the conclusion of the molding cycle, the plunger retracts, the mold opens and the molded part is ejected, whereupon the next molding cycle commences.
"Shanok's report further states that the feed chute should be vacuum cleaned when the material hopper is positioned away from the feed chute, so that raw plastic cannot be fed into the machine during cleaning. Nevertheless, the plaintiff allege that the foreman had ordered him to clean up during the completion of production, while the machine was still operating, so that the employer could avoid paying personnel overtime. Pursuant to these orders, he was required to reach into the chute with his hand
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Connecticut Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|