What Do You Think?
Can adjusting a safety guard on a piece of equipment ever constitute an intentional act, thus exposing an employer to personal injury claims? A case involving a worker for a box manufacturer who lost three fingers addresses how such claims might pan out in Ohio.
The company manufactured shipping boxes. As part of the manufacturing process, cardboard boxes were fed into a machine. The company decided to widen the safety guard on the machine so that it could handle double-walled boxes. This allegedly made the machine more dangerous at the pinch point, because someone could get there hand caught in the feeder. In fact, one worker had received lacerations using a similar machine. Other workers had been complaining of getting shocked and electrocuted at the pinch point, as well.
One day, the employee in this case was told to climb up ontop of the machine to work near the pinch-point. She felt she was getting shocked, after which her hand and arm got pulled in the machine, ripping the skin from her hand and resulting in the amputation of three fingers. She sued the company in tort, arguing that it intentionally injured her.
The employer asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the employee failed to show the company engaged in an affirmative, intentional act.
In Ohio, an injured employee cannot sue her employer in tort unless she shows that the employer: 1) specifically desired to injure her; or 2) knew that injury to an employee was certain or substantially certain to result from the employer’s act and despite this knowledge, still proceeded.
Further, deliberate removal by an employer of an equipment safety guard creates a rebuttable presumption that the removal was committed with intent to injure if an injury occurs as a direct result.
Did the employee have a case that the employer acted intentionally?
A. No. It didn’t remove any safety guard, it just widened it.
B. Yes. It effectively rendered the safety guard non-functional.
If you selected B, you agreed with the court in Dennison v. Packaging Corporation of America, No. 1:25-cv-02243. (N.D. Ohio. 08/11/26), which declined to dismiss the case.
The court pointed out that the employee was not merely alleging that the employer failed to act (e.g. by failing to install a safety guard). Instead, the employee alleged that the company essentially removed the safety guard after it was installed by widening it. While claims of a dangerous work environment are not enough by themselves to show intent, the employee here was asserting more than a failure to act.
Further, the court rejected the employers argument that it never deliberately removed a safety device because it did not physically remove the guard. The “Ohio Supreme Court includes the words ‘push aside,’ ‘bypass,’ or ‘otherwise eliminate’ in its definition of ‘deliberate removal,’” the court said.
Here, the employee plausably alleged that the comoabt essentially removed the guard because widening it made it non-functional. She also adequately alleged that the company knew that widening the guard was substantially certain to cause injury, especially given the injuries that other employees experienced prior to the incident.
