BENTON – U.S. Magistrate Judge Reona Daly ruled that barge worker Herbert Hardimon, who sued his employer over a plunge into the Mississippi River, can’t sue a second defendant over an accident that happened before his accident.
Daly dismissed American River Transportation from Hardimon’s suit with prejudice on July 12, finding he stretched proximate cause too far.
“It is simply not enough that American River Transportation’s alleged negligence may have initially placed him in the location where injury was eventually sustained to establish proximate cause,” she wrote.
She found that if she adopted his view, “it is not clear what line if any would be drawn, no matter how tenuous the connection from the purported negligence to the alleged injury.”
Roy Dripps of Maryville filed Hardimon’s suit against his employer, SCF Lewis and Clark Fleeting of Granite City, in March 2021.
Dripps alleged that on Feb. 13, 2020, SCF Lewis and Clark towed a crane barge from Granite City to Sauget.
He claimed a mixture of snow and ice had been falling for 24 hours.
He claimed that as Hardimon stepped from the crane barge to another barge, his foot slipped on ice and he fell into the river.
He claimed the current dragged Hardimon beneath a barge and his flotation device pushed him up and trapped him against the bottom of the barge.
“Plaintiff believed he would either drown while he was underneath the barges or he would freeze to death in the frigid waters before he could be rescued,” he wrote.
He claimed Hardimon was rescued 12 minutes after he fell.
Last October, he added American River Transportation as defendant.
He claimed SCF Lewis and Clark sent the crane barge to Sauget to help American River Transportation retrieve barges that had broken from their moorings.
He claimed that negligence in mooring, monitoring, and retrieving barges was a proximate cause of Hardimon’s injuries.
He amended the complaint this April, to make it more specific.
He claimed it was reasonably foreseeable that breakaway barges could damage other barges, that unrelated entities would attempt to repair damage done to their barges, that those entities would make repairs as soon as possible and could therefore perform repairs in dangerous weather and that employees of those entities would sustain injuries.
American River Transportation counsel Theodore Lucas of St. Louis moved to dismiss the complaint and requested that Daly do so with prejudice.
“Proximate cause requires more than merely possible dangers,” Lucas wrote.
He compared the claim to saying a mechanic who slips while repairing a car could recover from the negligent driver who originally damaged the car.
He claimed causing someone to be where he was injured is not enough for proximate cause.
Daly agreed.
She found Hardimon’s complaint revealed a tenuous connection between American River Transportation’s alleged negligence and Hardimon’s injury.
She found maritime law defines proximate cause as that cause which produced an injury in a direct and unbroken sequence.
She dismissed with prejudice, finding Hardimon didn’t address that request and didn’t request leave to amend.
She set bench trial for SCF Lewis and Clark next August.