Background
Dusty Courtney and Kenneth Meyer were co-employees at Wyoming Waste Systems. On August 4, 2023, Meyer—a 28-year veteran garbage truck operator—was training Courtney on a morning route in Fremont County. While collecting refuse in the dark, Courtney stopped the truck because he felt ill and exited on the driver’s side. The truck’s engine remained running and the front lift arms sat in their lowered, unstowed position. From the passenger seat, Meyer noticed the lift arms were down. He looked out his window, saw no obstructions, and activated the controls to raise the arms. Unknown to Meyer, Courtney had placed his hand at the pinch point of the driver’s side lift arm. The arm engaged and caught Courtney’s hand, causing serious injury.
Courtney sued Meyer for co-employee liability under the Wyoming Worker’s Compensation Act (the Act), Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 27-14-104(a). The Act generally immunizes co-employees from tort liability for work-related injuries—the trade-off for no-fault workers’ compensation coverage—but carves out an exception when a co-employee “intentionally act[s] to cause physical harm or injury.” The Wyoming Supreme Court has long interpreted that statutory phrase as requiring proof of willful and wanton misconduct: intentional conduct (or intentional failure to act) in reckless disregard of circumstances a reasonable person would know carry a high probability of resulting in harm to another.
Courtney argued that the cumulative effect of multiple safety violations created a triable question: Meyer operated the lift-arm controls from the passenger seat, could not see Courtney, violated the “Get Out and Look” (GOAL) rule, failed to keep his trainee in view, and activated the controls in the dark without confirming the area was clear. He also pointed to Meyer’s prior safety infractions and his allegedly callous post-accident conduct—including calling Courtney a vulgar name and dropping him at the company yard rather than driving him to the hospital. The District Court of Fremont County (Judge Conder) granted summary judgment to Meyer, and Courtney appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed (Justice Gray, joined by Chief Justice Boomgaarden and Justices Fenn, Jarosh, and Hill). The court reiterated the three elements required for co-employee liability under § 27-14-104(a): (1) the defendant co-employee had knowledge of the hazard or the serious nature of the risk involved; (2) the defendant had responsibility for the injured employee’s safety and working conditions; and (3) the defendant willfully disregarded the need to act despite awareness of the high probability of serious injury or death. The court identified knowledge of the hazard as the dispositive element on these facts.
The court reaffirmed—citing Lovato v. Case, 2022 WY 151, and Ramirez v. Brown, 2020 WY 79—that the knowledge requirement is particularized, not general: “[A]n injured worker cannot establish the particularized knowledge requirement by simply showing his co-employee knowingly violated general safety regulations or standards.” Even assuming every rule violation Courtney alleged was true, those violations showed only that someone could theoretically be injured near the lift arms—not that Meyer knew or should have known Courtney had placed his hand in the pinch point and that harm was therefore highly probable. The danger was not obvious, and the risk was not highly probable from Meyer’s vantage point.
The court drew the line by comparing analogous precedents. Cases where co-employee liability survived summary judgment—Poulos v. HPC (supervisor who personally experienced toxic fumes then sent a worker into the same tanks), Bertagnolli v. Louderback (supervisors who knew workers faced amputation or death from unguarded mine equipment and threatened to fire anyone who objected), and Case v. Goss (supervisor aware of dangerous condition who threatened a complaining worker and allowed him to be injured)—all involved defendants with specific, situational knowledge that harm was imminent and highly probable. Meyer’s case resembled Lovato (co-employee drove a truck over another employee without seeing him) and Vandre v. Kuznia (supervisors directed movement of a paving machine near a worker without checking the blind spot), where the Wyoming Supreme Court held that careless but not willful conduct could not pierce the immunity. Meyer’s alleged callous response to Courtney’s injury—assumed true for purposes of summary judgment—was irrelevant: the statute requires willful and wanton conduct in causing the injury, and post-incident behavior does not supply the pre-injury mental state the statute demands.
Key Takeaways
- To pierce Wyoming’s co-employee immunity under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 27-14-104(a), a plaintiff must produce evidence that the defendant co-employee had particularized knowledge that specific, highly probable harm would result—not merely general awareness of workplace hazards or a pattern of safety-rule violations.
- Violations of multiple safety rules, even cumulatively, do not establish willful and wanton misconduct unless those violations relate to a known and obvious risk that harm to a specific person was highly probable under the circumstances.
- A co-employee’s post-accident behavior—however callous—cannot retroactively supply the pre-injury mental state required for co-employee liability; the statutory exception turns on the state of mind at the time of the injurious act.
- Prior safety infractions unrelated to the specific hazard that caused the injury do not establish the “particularized knowledge” element and are insufficient to survive summary judgment on a willful-and-wanton theory.
Why It Matters
Wyoming’s Worker’s Compensation Act extends broad co-employee immunity as the statutory quid pro quo for no-fault compensation coverage, and the § 27-14-104(a) exception for intentional harm is invoked in virtually every serious co-employee injury case. Courtney v. Meyer continues a consistent line of Wyoming Supreme Court decisions—Lovato, Ramirez, Vandre—holding that the exception is genuinely narrow. Negligence, even serious and multi-faceted negligence, is not enough. The court requires evidence that the defendant co-employee had specific, in-the-moment knowledge that harm was highly probable, not just a generalized appreciation that safety rules exist for good reason.
For plaintiffs’ counsel in Wyoming, the practical implication is significant: to survive summary judgment, a co-employee liability case needs evidence of the kind present in Poulos or Bertagnolli—a supervisor who personally encountered the lethal condition just before sending a worker in, or management that knew workers faced amputation and coerced them to proceed anyway. Cumulative safety-rule violations and poor post-accident judgment will not carry the claim. For employers and defense counsel in Wyoming, the decision reinforces the breadth of co-employee immunity and the appropriateness of early summary judgment motions when the evidence, however sympathetic to the injured plaintiff, shows only general carelessness rather than particularized willful disregard of a specific, highly probable risk.