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SUAREZ v. DICKMONT PLASTICS CORPORATION2/18/1997
tely thirteen years prior to his injury. The defendant is a family owned and operated corporation that manufactures plastic parts using horizontal injection molding machines. As a "floorman," the plaintiff was responsible for, among other duties, removing hot plastic material from the machines at the end of his shift, which ran from 4 p.m. to midnight, so that the material could be stored in an oven until the next working day.
Because of the significant number of employees who spoke only Spanish, including the plaintiff, the defendant employed bilingual foremen to manage the employees on each shift. From approximately 1973 to 1976, the defendant employed a foreman, Santiago Santiago, who was the management person in charge of operations during the plaintiff's night shift, and reported directly to the defendant's owners. During the time
period from 1973 to 1976, Santiago instructed the plaintiff that he was required to remove the material from a hopper using a scoop and to also remove the material from the feed shoot and feed chamber with his bare hands while the machine was still producing plastic parts. On one occasion, the plaintiff attempted to stop the production cycle before the end of his work shift in order to clean out the material and Santiago became angry, yelling "very bad words" at him. Santiago insulted the plaintiff and told him that if the owners were to find out that the plaintiff had stopped production early, they would fire him. During the remainder of his employment with the defendant, out of fear of losing his job , the plaintiff never again attempted to stop production to clean out the material.
On another occasion, the plaintiff attempted to use an industrial vacuum cleaner as a safer method to remove the hot material from the machine while it was still operating. Santiago again became angry, striking a table with a pipe and threatening to fire the plaintiff if he used the vacuum cleaner again, because it wasted the hot material. Because of Santiago's threats, no other floormen cleaned the hot material out of the machines in a manner other than by handling a scoop with bare hands while the machine was operating.
During the years after Santiago had left the defendant's employ, the plaintiff worked under the direction of four other foremen. None of these foremen ever instructed the plaintiff that he was cleaning the hot material out of the machines in an improper manner. The policy remained that the floormen were not authorized to stop the machines to clean out the hot material prior to the end of the work shift. In June, 1986, two fingers on the plaintiff's right hand were partially amputated while he was removing the hot material from one of the machines.
At the close of evidence, the trial court instructed the jury on both the actual intent and substantial certainty standards for proving an intentional injury . Additionally, the trial court submitted four special interrogatories to the jury — three that addressed the defendant's liability and one that addressed the plaintiff's own culpability. In reaching its verdict, the jury answered in the affirmative interrogatory number two, which addressed the actual intent standard, and answered the substantial certainty interrogatories in the negative. The jury also answered interrogatory number four in the negative, finding that the plaintiff was not culpable for his injury.
Accordingly, the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff in the amount of $150,000. The defendant subsequently filed motions to set aside the verdict and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, both of which the trial court denied. Specifically, the trial court stated that "viewing the evidence in the light most
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