Conecuh County Jury Awards $774,363 to Worker Whose Arm Was Pulled Into Plastic-Netting Machine
After trial: We found no post-trial appeal in public court records. Whether Tenax SPA, an Italian company, has paid the judgment is not public.
Won by Beasley Allen.
John Dees, a staffing-agency worker at a plastic-netting plant in Evergreen, Alabama, had his arm pulled into a Ram4 stretching machine in January 2015. After the Alabama Supreme Court held the Alabama Tenax companies immune under the workers' compensation act, the case went to trial against the Italian manufacturer, Tenax SPA. On Nov. 30, 2018, a Conecuh County jury awarded $649,363 in compensatory damages and $125,000 in punitive damages.
What happened
In January 2015, John Dees was working at the Tenax Manufacturing Alabama plant in Evergreen, where the company makes plastic netting. Dees had been placed at the plant by Onin Staffing. While he was operating a Ram4 stretching machine, his finger caught in the equipment and his arm was drawn in, reportedly up to the shoulder. The injury left permanent disfigurement and a lasting loss of function in the arm.
Dees sued in Conecuh County Circuit Court. His claim was that the Ram4 had design flaws and inadequate safety features that made it dangerous, among them a guard that did not keep a worker's hand from reaching the moving parts and no automatic shut-off. The defendants included Tenax Corporation, Tenax Manufacturing Alabama, Onin Staffing and Tenax SPA, the Italian company that built the machine.
The case stalled first on a question of who could be sued at all. The two Alabama Tenax companies asked the Alabama Supreme Court to order summary judgment in their favor, arguing the exclusive-remedy provisions of the Workers' Compensation Act shielded them from a tort suit. In Ex parte Tenax Corp., decided Jan. 27, 2017, the court granted that petition and ordered summary judgment for the two companies, with Evan G. Allen of the Montgomery firm Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles appearing for Dees. That ruling took the Alabama companies out of the tort case and left the machine's manufacturer as the defendant.
The case against Tenax SPA was tried in Evergreen, and the jury returned its verdict on Nov. 30, 2018. It awarded Dees $649,363 in compensatory damages and added $125,000 in punitive damages, which Alabama law allows when a jury finds wanton conduct. Together the two awards came to $774,363, against Tenax SPA alone.
The trial presented the machine's guarding as the central failure. Dees's side argued that the guard on the Ram4 fell short of both U.S. and European safety standards, and the punitive award reflects the jury's finding that the manufacturer acted with conscious disregard for the safety of the people who would run the machine.
WorkCompCentral reported the verdict in December 2018 as more than $774,000 for the injured worker. No post-trial appeal turned up in the public court records we searched.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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