Overlapping immunity claims weighed in highway worker’s death

The Missouri Supreme Court is considering whether one or more forms of immunity will protect four supervisors from a lawsuit following the death of a highway worker and her unborn child.

Kaitlyn Anderson, who was six months pregnant with her son, Jaxx Jarvis, died in November 2021 when a car struck her while she was striping a busy intersection near Interstate I-255 in St. Louis County. Anderson’s mother and Jaxx’s father brought wrongful death claims against multiple parties, including four of Anderson’s supervisors at the Missouri Department of Transportation.

The suit alleges that Anderson was assigned a dangerous task even though her supervisors knew she was pregnant and that they failed to provide a protective vehicle that would have served as a barrier as required by department rules.

But the MoDOT supervisors — who weren’t present at the scene at the time of the accident — argue that they are immune from suit in three ways. As Anderson’s co-workers, they argue that that state’s workers’ compensation laws bar a claim against them unless they committed an “affirmative negligent act that purposefully and dangerously caused or increased the risk of injury,” which they deny.

They also argue that the doctrine of official immunity covers them for their discretionary actions, which they say includes the implementation of the safety requirements. Finally, they argued, the public duty doctrine shields them as any duty of care was owed to the public in general, not to particular individuals.

A St. Louis County judge allowed the claims to proceed, but the MoDOT supervisors sought four separate writs in the Supreme Court asking the court to end the litigation under the claimed immunity doctrines.

“This accident had a profound impact on the entire MoDOT community, including the four supervisors named in this lawsuit,” Matthew Noce of Reichardt Noce & Young, an attorney for the defendants, said at arguments on March 27. “However, that does not change the fact that this was an unfortunate workplace accident.”

Christine Anderson of Faerber & Anderson in Kirkwood, an attorney for the plaintiffs, urged the court to allow the case to proceed. She argued that the pain her clients had undergone outweighed the inconvenience of litigation for the defendants, who “should not be allowed to hide behind immunities just because they’re public employees who reached the level of supervisor.”

Both co-employee liability and the various official immunity doctrines have been the subject of many recent Supreme Court cases. Though the judges asked few questions, it was clear that the overlapping immunity claims may relate differently to the two very differently situated victims. In particular, they struggled with how to regard the in utero baby.

“How is Jaxx a co-employee?” Judge W. Brent Powell asked Noce. Noce said he wasn’t making such an argument, prompting Powell to ask how the workers’ compensation-related immunity applied.

“It just applies to co-employees, right?” Powell said.

“If there’s no duty owed to the mother, I don’t know how we can create a new duty owed to a fetus by a supervisor,” Noce responded. “I think that is a slippery and dangerous slope that we would be creating here.”

The cases are State ex rel. Love v. Cunningham, SC100197; State ex rel. Ludwick v. Cunningham, SC100198; State ex rel. Jordan v. Cunningham, SC100199; and State ex rel. Henson v. Cunningham, SC100200.