Williams v. Chartis Casualty Co. et al., No. 12-2130 (8th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff, injured on an oil and gas rig, filed suit against various third parties - including TESCO and TESCO employee Jeffrey Anderson - after recovering workers' compensation benefits from his employer, DeSoto. SWE was the owner/operator of the oil and gas well. The court concluded that the SWE contract did not establish that the common law duty of care Anderson owed plaintiff extended to preventing unforeseen injuries caused by DeSoto's failure to follow SWE's safety rules; Anderson and TESCO had no duty to foresee that injury to a DeSoto employee would occur because other DeSoto employees not under defendants' control had failed to exercise their duty of care; ordinary care did not require Anderson to foresee that his encouraging word would cause a DeSoto driller to do something he had not already decided, indeed, been ordered to do; and the amount of encouragement Anderson gave the DeSoto driller was insubstantial. Finally, the district court did not abuse its discretion in striking an expert report submitted by plaintiff and in denying the motion to amend. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
Court Description: Civil case - Torts. The contract in question did not establish that the common law duty of care defendant Anderson owed plaintiff extended to preventing unforeseen injuries caused by plaintiff's employer's failure to follow applicable safety rules; further, defendant Anderson was not in charge of the movement of the equipment which injured plaintiff and had no reason to foresee that his comment to raise the equipment would cause the employer's workers to raise the equipment without ensuring that it was safe to do so; district court did not abuse its discretion by striking an untimely export report; district court did not abuse its discretion by denying plaintiff's motion to amend his complaint.
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