Mining Law Violation Not a Basis for Negligence Per Se for All Injuries Occurring at Mining Facility
At a Kentucky coal mine, a worker for a subcontractor was killed during the installation of a garage door. His wife brought a wrongful death action against the mining company who had hired a construct a post frame building at the facility, and that contractor hired the decedent’s employer to install an overhead commercial-grade garage door. Four theories of negligence were asserted: (1) common law duty to provide a safe workplace and safe equipment, (2) negligence per se for violating mine safety statutes and regulations, (3) voluntary assumption of duty based on the mining company’s safety procedures and promises to furnish equipment and training, and a (4) contractual duty of care pursuant to the contract that the mining company entered into with the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The district court granted summary judgment to the mining company, and on appeal to the Sixth Circuit, that court certified the following question to the Kentucky Supreme Court: “Whether a subcontractor injured while installing a garage door on an unfinished building at a mine site may maintain a wrongful death action against a mine operator under a negligence per se theory for alleged violations of Kentucky mining [statutes and] regulations, codified in KRS §§ 351–352 and KAR §§ 805825.” The Kentucky Supreme Court responded that Kentucky’s mining regulations did not support a wrongful death action predicated upon a theory of negligence per se in this factual context. Specifically, the worker “was not within the class of persons intended to be protected by” Kentucky’s mining laws and “the failure to secure the garage door in accordance with the manufacturer’s installation instructions, and its subsequent fall” was “not the type of occurrence that [Kentucky’s] mining statutes were intended to prevent.”
Based on the response to the certified question, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the mining company yesterday. The Sixth Circuit also rejected the argument that the mining company had assumed a duty to the worker by adopting certain internal safety policies and procedures applicable to contractors and subcontractors. Because Kentucky rejects the notion that a person or business entity’s adoption of an internal guideline or policy and subsequent failure to follow that guideline automatically leads to liability under Restatement (Second) of Torts 324A, the mining company’s failure to follow its internal safety policies could not, without more, form the basis of liability for the accident under Kentucky law. The Sixth Circuit explained, “Even if [the mining company] initially promised to provide safety equipment and training to [the worker], and these promises are considered “rendering services,” [the mining company] never actually provided equipment or training and therefore could not have failed to exercise reasonable care that would have increased the harm to [the worker] under section 323(a).
