Background
Jose Camara, a farm laborer for Gill Dairy, was severely injured in 2019 when his clothing became entangled in an unguarded rotating power take-off shaft on a sand spreader. He alleged that Gill Dairy had deliberately removed the shaft’s safety guards, entitling him to the rebuttable presumption of intent to injure under R.C. 2745.01(C).
The trial court denied Gill Dairy’s summary-judgment motion because a factual dispute existed over deliberate removal. After trial, a jury found for Camara on his employer-intentional-tort claim and awarded $1.934 million in compensatory damages. The Twelfth District reversed, holding that Gill Dairy should have received summary judgment because Camara had not shown that the company deliberately removed and consciously decided not to replace the guards.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court of Ohio reversed. When a summary-judgment denial rests on a factual dispute and the case later goes to trial, an appellate court must consider the full trial record, not only the pretrial summary-judgment materials. The Twelfth District improperly set aside the jury’s verdict based on its segregated review of the earlier record.
The court also held that R.C. 2745.01(C) does not require an employee to prove both deliberate removal of an equipment safety guard and a separate deliberate decision never to reattach it. The statutory presumption attaches upon evidence of an employer’s deliberate removal of a safety guard and an injury directly resulting from that removal. Trial evidence allowed a reasonable jury to find that Gill Dairy deliberately removed the guards, including evidence of repair work requiring guard removal, the guards’ prolonged absence, and evidence concerning an altered document presented to a state investigator.
Key Takeaways
- Posttrial review of a fact-based summary-judgment denial must account for the complete trial record.
- R.C. 2745.01(C) does not add a separate requirement that an employer decided not to reinstall a deliberately removed safety guard.
- Deliberate removal may be established through direct or circumstantial evidence.
Why It Matters
The decision prevents appellate courts from displacing a jury verdict by reassessing only the incomplete pretrial record where the summary-judgment issue turned on disputed facts. It also rejects a judicially added limitation on Ohio’s employer-intentional-tort presumption for deliberate removal of equipment safety guards.
The case returns to the Twelfth District to address Gill Dairy’s two remaining appellate assignments of error, which that court previously did not reach.