The plaintiff filed a lawsuit in state court alleging that from 1956 to 1990, he was employed by the defendant and “spent a significant portion of that time ‘dealing with asbestos, fiber glass products and other hazardous products.’” The three causes of action were for: (1) premises liability; (2) negligence; and (3) negligent infliction of emotional distress. The defendant removed the case to the Northern District of California and then moved to dismiss it on the grounds that California’s Workers’ Compensation Act provided the exclusive remedy for work-related injuries. The plaintiff, in response, filed an amended complaint wherein he and his wife alleged seven causes of action, including the three aforementioned causes of action, as well as: (4) products liability/manufacturing defect; (5) products liability/design defect; (6) products liability/failure to warn; and (7) loss of consortium.
The defendant first argued that all of the claims asserted in the amended complaint were barred under the “exclusive remedy provision” of the California Workers’ Compensation Act. Under this argument, since the amended complaint alleged that the defendant was the plaintiff’s employer, that plaintiff was exposed to asbestos products during the course of his employment, and that he developed injuries as a result of said exposure, the pertinent elements of the Act were met. The plaintiff countered the assertion by documenting his efforts to unsuccessfully secure the payment of compensation from any purported insurer of the defendant. He asserted that his failure allowed this case to fall into an area of California labor law which provides that “[i]f any employer fails to secure the payment of compensation, any injured employee or his dependents may bring an action at law against such employer for damages.” In response, the defendant submitted a certificate of consent to self-insure that was issued to it in 1930 and had been in full force and effect ever since and requested that the court take judicial notice of same. The certification would take the compensation issue out of the purview of the pertinent labor laws.
The plaintiff also alleged “bad faith” as a result of the defendant’s failure to respond to inquiries as to the workers’ compensation claim and a claim under California’s “dual capacity doctrine,” which allows labor lawsuits to go forward in “narrow factual circumstances presented where the employee’s injury was caused by the employer’s product, which itself was provided to the employee not by the employer, but by an independent third person who obtained the product from the employer for valuable consideration.”
The court dismissed the plaintiff’s arguments in their entirety. It noted that the certification provided by the defendant did, in fact, leave the claim subject to the “exclusive remedy provision” of the California Workers’ Compensation Act. Further, the court noted the plaintiff had not cited any authority for a “bad faith” exception to the “exclusive remedy provision” and that his allegations in the amended complaint were too “legally conclusory” and “not supported by any factual allegations” to suggest that the “dual capacity doctrine” would be applicable. The court accordingly expressly dismissed the first six causes of action, and did not address the loss of consortium claim, which necessarily had to be dismissed too. However, the court did grant the plaintiff leave to amend the complaint one additional time to assert a claim for fraudulent concealment. Such a claim, if established, is a recognized exception to the “exclusive remedy provision” and provides that “[w]here the employee’s injury is aggravated by the employer’s fraudulent concealment of the existence of the injury and its connection with the employment.”