February 25, 2019 The third circuit court of appeals has found the parent company not liable for the death of a subsidiary worker. The case is Grimsley v. Manitowoc Co., 675 F. App'x 118 (3d Cir. 2017).

In 2013, an employee of Grove U.S. LLC (Grove), and Grove's parent company Manitowoc, died at a Shady Grove, Pennsylvania worksite when he was pinned between 2 cranes while working. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigated the incident, and fined Grove. The employee's widow received workers compensation death benefits. Later she filed a wrongful death and survival action asserting negligence and strict liability against Grove. She asserted that Manitowoc was her deceased husbands' employer and that she had received workers compensation on his behalf from Grove, the parent company was not immune from a lawsuit. The court noted that some documents filed by the workers compensation insurer demonstrated some confusion by listing Grove with Manitowoc's federal employer identification number with its claim filed with the state's Workers Compensation Bureau. Despite this, the court noted that the insurer later amended the deceases worker's employer from Manitowoc to Grove, and changed the ID number to reflect that change.

Additionally, the widow asserted that Manitowoc exercised control over her husband while he was in Grove's employ because the crane was owned by Manitowoc and had the company's logo branded on the vehicle. The court refuted this, holding that the record did not indicate that Manitowoc represented itself as the employer, not Grove, and that undisputedly the cranes involved in the employee's death were owned by Grove, and branded with Grove's logo. The court found that the widow failed to show that Manitowoc exercised a level of control going beyond the normal scope of parent company-subsidiary company control to owe an enhanced duty to provide a safe work environment for the deceased employee.

Editors Note: This court's decision that under this set of facts a parent company was not negligent in the death of a subsidiary's employee was a logical one. Since the court determined that Grove was the employer of the decedent at the time of his death, and the decedent's estate was paid out of the workers compensation benefits, Grove was entitled to immunity from the lawsuit under the Pennsylvania Workers Compensation Act. The court extended that immunity to Manitowoc determining that the plaintiff “sought to pierce the corporate veil against those entities in order to circumvent the employer-immunity statute and hold them liable for Grove's conduct.” Piercing the corporate veil is a reference to a situation where courts hold a corporation's shareholders and directors personally liable for the corporation's debts. In this case, the plaintiff wanted to get around the statutory immunity and get to the parent company to hold more than one entity responsible for the death of her husband. Unfortunately for the plaintiff, but fortunately for Manitowoc, her case was unsuccessful.