In Quintino Dinino v. Federal Express Corporation, et al, 176 Conn. App. 248 (2017), a unanimous panel of the Appellate Court affirmed the trial court’s entry of summary judgment in favor of Halloran & Sage’s client. There, the plaintiff was seeking to hold his co-worker (Halloran & Sage’s client) liable for injuries the plaintiff sustained in a work-related incident. In an effort to avoid Connecticut’s worker’s compensation exclusivity, the plaintiff sought to avail himself of the so-called “motor vehicle exception,” arguing that his co-worker had improperly parked a vehicle in such a way that caused the plaintiff to fall and injure himself. The Appellate Court, however, agreed with Halloran & Sage that its client, the plaintiff’s co-worker, was not operating the vehicle for purposes of the exception because the vehicle was in park and it remained immobile when the incident occurred.
To reach this conclusion, the panel traced established case-law that has addressed the concept of “operation” in the context of the worker’s compensation act and explained that the “relevant inquiry is whether the injury occurred as a result of [the co-worker’s] movement of the vehicle or a circumstance resulting from its movement.” Whereas here, the vehicle is immobile, it is not being operated. The panel rejected the plaintiff’s attempt to avoid this conclusion through reliance on cases which assessed “operating” in the context of a statutory waiver of sovereign immunity. In doing so, it credited, among other things, Halloran & Sage’s observation that the parked vehicle was not performing the function of an ordinary motor vehicle at the time of the incident but was, rather, serving as a storage facility for the containers that the plaintiff was tasked with unloading. In sum, the Court concluded that “[n]either line of cases interpreting the meaning of “operation” counsels us to adopt the exceedingly broad definition that the plaintiff suggests.”
Laura Pascale Zaino, a member of Halloran & Sage’s Appellate Practice Group, argued the appeal for the defendant co-worker. Kevin M. Roche and Rachel J. Fain obtained the summary judgment in the trial court.