Background
Jessica Chauvin, a flatbed truck driver for Acme Truck Line, went to Express Weld’s yard to collect fabricated steel walkway structures. Express Weld employee Christopher Descant used a forklift to load the structures and, while trying to rearrange and untangle them, pushed them off the trailer. Chauvin approached to help separate the materials, and some fell on her foot, causing injuries that ultimately required the amputation of two toes.
Chauvin sued Express Weld and Descant for negligence, alleging failures involving employee training, warnings, safety procedures, supervision, and the loading and securing of the materials. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants, reasoning that the accident would not have happened had Chauvin remained in the safe area and refrained from touching the materials. It separately denied the defendants’ motion in limine seeking to exclude the opinions of Chauvin’s safety expert, Carl Andrew McKewen.
The Court’s Holding
The First Circuit reversed the summary judgment. Although the defendants initially showed an absence of factual support for breach, Chauvin produced evidence creating genuine disputes over whether Express Weld and Descant breached duties concerning hazard assessments, safety instructions, personal protective equipment, visitor safety, and forklift operations. Her expert opined that the defendants’ safety failures violated applicable OSHA standards and contributed to the accident.
The court also found genuine factual disputes concerning causation and whether Chauvin’s conduct was foreseeable. A reasonable jury could conclude that the defendants’ alleged failures were a cause-in-fact of her injuries, and conflicting testimony existed about whether Descant saw or should have anticipated Chauvin’s approach. Chauvin’s own knowledge and conduct could bear on comparative fault at trial but did not establish the defendants’ entitlement to summary judgment.
The court denied the defendants’ answer to the appeal challenging the admission of McKewen’s opinions. Because the defendants did not formally introduce evidence at the motion-in-limine hearing, documents merely attached to their memoranda could not satisfy their burden to establish that the expert’s opinions were inadmissible.
Key Takeaways
- The open and obvious nature of a hazard is one factor in Louisiana’s risk-utility analysis, not an automatic bar to recovery.
- Evidence of inadequate hazard assessments, PPE enforcement, safety communications, and forklift practices created triable questions of breach and causation.
- A plaintiff’s potentially negligent conduct ordinarily bears on comparative fault and does not necessarily eliminate the defendant’s liability on summary judgment.
- Documents attached to motion-in-limine memoranda are not evidence unless they are properly offered and introduced into the record.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that Louisiana courts generally should not resolve fact-intensive negligence and comparative-fault questions through summary judgment when competing evidence could permit reasonable jurors to assign responsibility to multiple parties. A worker’s decision to enter a hazardous area does not necessarily supersede alleged safety failures by the party controlling the worksite.
The opinion also highlights a procedural trap in expert challenges: a party moving to exclude an expert must formally introduce the supporting evidence at the hearing rather than rely on attachments to briefing.