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Humes v. Fritz Companies1/31/2005
Kenneth Humes sued the defendants for an injury he suffered outside the Tulalip Indian Reservation casino. At the time of the injury, Joe Crowder was driving a truck for Fritz Companies and Humes was operating a crane. Humes loaded a container onto Crowder's truck, and Crowder began to drive his truck away before anyone could detach the cable of the crane from the container. The truck pulled on the crane cables and lifted the crane off its rear. Humes jumped out of the crane cab in fear that the truck would pull the crane end-over-end. Crowder stopped his truck before any damage would have happened to Humes inside the crane cabin. But Humes broke his leg when he landed on the asphalt of the casino's parking lot.
Humes sued Crowder and Fritz ('the Fritz defendants'). On pretrial motions for partial summary judgment, the trial court held that the trier of fact could not allocate fault for Humes' injury to the Tulalip Tribes ('the Tribe') and that Humes was not contributorily negligent. At trial, the court included a 'duty to see' instruction in the jury instructions. The court did not instruct on contributory negligence, and it gave an instruction on proximate causation that did not specifically allow for consideration of Humes' jump as an independent, intervening cause of his injury. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Humes. Following denial of their motion for a new trial, the Fritz defendants appeal.
We conclude that the Tribe's sovereign immunity does not bar the allocation of fault to the Tribe. Furthermore, the actions of the casino's maintenance director raise a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the Tribe retained control of the workplace. We therefore reverse the trial court's partial summary judgment that the trier of fact could not allocate fault to the Tribe.
The trial court correctly granted partial summary judgment for Humes on the issue of contributory negligence, as no reasonable jury could find that Humes acted unreasonably in the face of an emergency. For the same reason, the trial court did not err in refusing to instruct on contributory negligence. Additionally, the trial court did not err in submitting a 'duty to see' instruction under the factual circumstances presented. The trial court's proximate causation instruction was adequate, as Humes' jump was a foreseeable result of Crowder's actions and therefore did not constitute an independent, intervening cause of his injury.
FACTS
In April 2000, Kenneth Humes was operating a crane at the Tulalip Casino on the Tulalip Indian Reservation, near Marysville, Washington. The casino management wanted containers moved from one area of the casino parking lot to another. The company that leased the containers to the casino hired Fritz Companies to supply two trucks with drivers. The casino hired Humes' employer, Shaffer Crane & Equipment, to supply a crane and a crane operator for loading the containers onto the trucks and unloading them at the destination.
Shaffer assigned Humes to the job and provided a 40-ton mobile crane for Humes' use. During operations, Humes sat in a glass-and-frame cabin at the base of the crane boom. He loaded and unloaded six containers without any problem. When he loaded the seventh container onto Crowder's truck, Crowder began to drive his truck away before anyone disconnected the cables of the crane. The truck pulled on the crane cables and lifted the crane off its rear. Humes jumped out of the crane cabin in fear that the crane would be pulled completely over its front end. He suffered a broken leg when he landed on the ground. The truck stopped before the crane was pulled over.
An official from the Washingt
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