United States: Oklahoma Plaintiff’s Intentional Tort Action Against Employer Fails

Construing Oklahoma law, a federal district court dismissed a civil action filed by a Marriott International employee against Marriott on the basis that the plaintiff had not alleged sufficient facts to plausibly show that his injury was the result of a willful, deliberate, and specific intent of Marriott to cause his injury [see Okla. Stat. tit. 85A, § 5(A),(B)(2)]. Plaintiff sustained severe burns when a pipe beneath one of his employer’s dishwashing machines burst, spewing hot water over his entire body. Plaintiff contended he and other employees had warned Marriott for more than a year that the machine sounded as if it was about to burst. The federal court acknowledged that plaintiff had certainly alleged that Marriott had knowledge that the plaintiff's injury was substantially certain to result from its conduct, but that was no longer the standard. Under the Administrative Workers' Compensation Act ("AWCA”), the substantially certain rule no longer applied. Plaintiff had not pled facts showing it was at least as likely as not that Marriott acted with the purpose of injuring plaintiff. As to the plaintiff’s contention that the AWCA statute was unconstitutional, the district court found that the plaintiff had not shown a basis for avoiding the presumption of constitutionality that applies to any statute.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Bartra v. Marriott Int'l, Inc., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6629 (W.D. Okla., Jan. 16, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 103.04.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law