Yasis v. City of St. Paul et al., No. A10-1045 (Minn. App., Dec. 28, 2010)
Type of Case: Construction
Practice Area(s): Construction
Office(s): Minneapolis
Date: Dec 28 2010
Heirs of a tunnel worker, who drowned while working in St Paul sewer system because he failed to follow his employer’s directive to evacuate immediately when told to do so and because his foreman that day waited too long to call for an evacuation, brought a wrongful-death suit against the City of St. Paul, the tunnel owner, and the City’s independent consulting engineer. The Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the City and engineer despite dogged attempts by the plaintiffs to create fact issues as to whether the City and engineer had retained sufficient control over the project to be held liable for the worker’s death. In the absence of liability on the part of the City and its engineer, the heirs’ recovery would be limited to what they received in settlement with tunnel contractor’s workers compensation carrier. Applying longstanding law, the court of appeals held that plaintiffs had failed to show that the City or its engineer retained control over the operative details of the tunnel work and that the defendants, thus, had no liability for the tunnel worker’s death.
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