Justia Injury Law Opinion Summaries

The village, on the Mississippi River, experienced a 500-year rain in 2007. Debris carried by the water clogged the trestle beneath the railroad bridge, causing runoff to back up and inundate the village. Residents sued the railroad, alleging faulty design and maintenance of the trestle. The district court dismissed for failure to state a claim, holding that Wis. Stat. 88.87 provided the exclusive remedy and that relief was foreclosed under that statute because plaintiffs had not filed a timely notice of claim. The statute imposes a duty on railroad companies that construct and maintain railroad grades in or across drainage courses not to impede the flow of surface water in an unreasonable manner and grants injured landowners the right to sue for equitable relief and inverse condemnation but not damages. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Plaintiff forfeited claims that section 88.87 did not apply, so the court declined to address preemption by the Federal Railway Safety Act.

Rice, charged with attempted bank robbery, was known to have schizophrenia, and shortly before his death, was found incompetent to stand trial. Although seen by mental health professionals while detained, Rice often refused to take medications, eat, or bathe. He was hospitalized at psychiatric and other medical facilities several times and was awaiting placement at a state psychiatric facility. Rice died, about 15 months after arriving at the jail, of psychogenic polydipsia (excessive water drinking), a disorder known to manifest with schizophrenia. His estate filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging deliberate indifference. The district court entered summary judgment against the estate, which filed a second suit, reasserting state wrongful death claims previously dismissed. The judge dismissed, citing collateral estoppel, reasoning that a previous finding as to foreseeability of the cause of death precluded recovery on state claims. The Seventh Circuit reversed in part, holding that a material dispute of fact precluded summary judgment on one of the 1983 claims: that conditions of confinement were inhumane. The district court erred in dismissing state claims; the prior finding concerning foreseeability was not preclusive with respect to those claims.

Employers must maintain a log of work-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses, 29 C.F.R. 1904.4(a); an incident is "work-related" if "the work environment either caused or contributed to the resulting condition." Employees in the company's packing department fill containers, a process requiring repetitive hand movements, and pronation. When an employee developed lateral epicondylitis, painful swelling of ligaments and tendons around a joint, in her right arm, the company did not log the injury. The Department of Labor assessed a $900 penalty for failing to log a work-related injury. An ALJ sustained the penalty. The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission declined review. The Seventh Circuit vacated, holding that substantial evidence was not enough to sustain the administrative decision. The ALJ was required to take account of competing evidence and inferences; the ALJ ignored strong indications that its favored witness was wrong. The court noted that inclusion of the work-relatedness requirement, requiring employers to judge the source of injury, "is a puzzle."

Insurers sought a declaration that they had no duty to defend or indemnify in tort suits brought against the insured village, concerning discovery of "perc," a carcinogenic common dry cleaning solvent, in one of its wells and the village's continued use of the well without disclosure. The district court, relying on a pollution exclusion in the policies, granted summary judgment for the insurers. The exclusion refers to "actual, alleged or threatened discharge, dispersal, seepage, migration, release or escape of 'pollutants'" and excludes from coverage expenses for "cleaning up ... or in any way responding to, or assessing the effects of pollutants." After exploring the reasons for the exclusion, the Seventh Circuit affirmed. The court rejected an argument that this was not a pollution case, because the amount of perc in the water was below the maximum level permitted by environmental regulations. The complaints actually filed "describe in copious detail the conduct giving rise to the tort suits, and in doing so inadvertently but unmistakably acknowledge the applicability of the pollution exclusion."

An off-duty police officer, Glover, shot and killed Prado during a late-night road incident. Glover claimed that Prado had tried to run him over and had a gun, which was not found. He claimed he was complying with a department rule, requiring officers to act even when off duty. Glover was placed on desk duty. An inquest jury found justification, but a year later Glover was charged with homicide and perjury and suspended from the force. He committed suicide. Prado's estate brought excessive-force and loss-of-life claims (42 U.S.C. 1983) and named the city a defendant under a statute that requires the city to pay judgments assessed against employees for acts committed within the scope of employment. The jury found that Glover used unreasonable force under color of law, but found that he was not within the scope of employment. The Seventh Circuit reversed. Because of the risk that jurors would mistakenly intuit that if the officer used excessive force, he must have acted outside the scope of employment so that refusal to give the modified scope-of-employment instruction was prejudicial error. Under Wisconsin law an employer who retains an employee after he commits a tort does not ratify his conduct.

County sheriff deputies responded to a call indicating that Marc had left the home he shared with his parents and was possibly a danger to himself and others. Officers located Marc and determined that he should be involuntarily committed. During initial evaluation at a hospital, officers discovered Marc's wallet, but their search was not thorough enough to discover that the wallet contained a razor blade. Later, still in police custody, Marc regained possession of the razor blade during transport to a mental health facility. He used the blade to commit suicide in the back of a squad car. His father filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that the officers were deliberately indifferent to Marc's risk of suicide. The district court entered summary judgment for the defendants. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The totality of the officers' actions did not indicate deliberate indifference.

Defendant performed occasional maintenance and repairs for a fleet of plaintiff's delivery trucks. Defendant usually provided service onsite at plaintiff's plant, but sometimes would take trucks to its shop. In 2007, defendant's employee caused a fatal traffic accident while driving plaintiff's tractor-trailer to defendant's shop for service. The district court concluded that under Illinois law only plaintiff's insurance policy provided coverage for the accident. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Both insurers provide coverage: defendant's policy by its plain language and plaintiff's policy operation of Illinois public policy. Plaintiff and its insurer are, however, ultimately responsible for the settlement amount. Under Illinois law the vehicle owner's policy is primary over the operator's policy unless a statute provides otherwise. The Illinois tow-truck insurance statute does not apply to provide an exception.

Hernandez caused a severe auto accident that closed northbound I-57 for several hours. With traffic not moving, four hours later, a truck rear-ended plaintiff's vehicle, more than four miles away, killing one occupant and seriously injuring his brother. Among others, plaintiff brought a personal-injury suit against Hernandez and related entities on the theory that Hernandez proximately caused the second accident. The district court entered summary judgment for Hernandez and the other defendants. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. There was a four-hour, four-mile gap and the truck driver's behavior was remarkably different than that of other drivers who approached stopped traffic.

After a 1999 auto accident, plaintiff had severe back pains and was diagnosed with a Chiari malformation, a protrusion of brain tissue into the spinal canal. After three operations on her brain and spine, her vision and speech problems lessened, but she developed hydrocephalus, a buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain that required installation of a shunt in her brain. She has not worked since the auto accident and was last insured for social security disability benefits in June 2005 (when she was 34 years old), so only if she was disabled from full-time work by that date is she eligible for benefits. An administrative law judge found her capable of sedentary work. The Seventh Circuit reversed, finding that the ALJ failed to bridge the gap between medical testimony and plaintiff's testimony and his conclusion.

Plaintiff, a driver, fell off a truck when he hit his head on low overhead pipes while attempting to unload chemicals at a facility owed by defendant. No employee of defendant instructed him or assisted. The court entered summary judgment for defendant, finding that the Illinois deliberate-encounter exception of the open-and-obvious doctrine in negligence did not apply. Under that exception, if an invitee harms himself on an open and obvious hazard, the landowner may still be liable if it had reason to expect that the invitee would deliberately encounter the hazard because the advantages of doing so outweigh the apparent risk to a reasonable person. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The burden of measures to prevent such a fall would be substantial; defendant had no reason to foresee that plaintiff would ignore his training in an attempt to loosen an unusually tight dome lid.