How Gill Dairy permanently injured their employee.

The Facts

Gill Dairy bought the sand spreader in 2011. A power take-off shaft, commonly called a PTO shaft, connected the spreader to a tractor and transferred mechanical power to the equipment. When operating, the shaft rotated at 540 revolutions per minute.

The manufacturer installed a guard over the shaft and another over the coupling where the shaft met the spreader’s gearbox. Warning labels near the mechanism read “DANGER, ENTANGLEMENT HAZARD” and “Keep Guards in Place.”

On April 22, 2019, Camara noticed an oil leak. He shut the spreader down but couldn’t locate the source. He then restarted it to continue looking. Clothing on his left leg became entangled in the exposed shaft.

The Guards Were Missing Before the Injury

The trial record did not contain a single admission identifying precisely who removed each guard and when. It contained a sequence of repairs, images, statements and documents from which the jury could draw an inference.

Warnings, Repairs and a Troubling Paper Trail

Camara testified that he raised concerns with co-owner Frank Van Genugten in 2017 about the lack of proper guards. According to Camara, Van Genugten told him not to worry and to continue working. The opinion presents that exchange as Camara’s testimony, not as an independently established admission.

An Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigator recorded a separate conversation with Van Genugten after the injury. According to the investigator’s report, Van Genugten said he didn’t know when the coupling guard was removed, identified co-owner Tony Gill as the person who had performed a repair, and said the PTO shaft had lacked a guard for as long as he could remember.

The January 2019 quote became another piece of circumstantial evidence. An Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation investigator requested an invoice showing that Gill Dairy had purchased a new PTO assembly. The investigator instead received a copy of the quote with the word “quote” removed. Gill testified that the company had given its documents to its lawyer and that no one at Gill Dairy contacted the investigator to clarify that the document was a quote rather than an invoice.

The Supreme Court described the document as appearing to have been altered. It did not determine who altered it. On a separate evidence-spoliation claim, the jury found that Gill Dairy had willfully destroyed evidence to disrupt Camara’s ability to prove a pending or probable case. The same jury also found that the destruction had not actually impaired his ability to prove the claim, so Gill Dairy won on that count.

What Camara Had to Live With

The exposed machinery did not produce an abstract safety violation. Camara suffered permanent injuries to both legs and his left shoulder. His treatment required skin grafts and multiple surgeries.

The jury awarded $1,934,000 in compensatory damages after finding that Gill Dairy deliberately removed an equipment safety guard, that the removal directly caused Camara’s injury and that the company had not rebutted the law’s presumption of intent. The opinion does not provide a breakdown of the damages or establish that any other Gill Dairy worker suffered a similar injury.

The case turned on whether a jury could infer deliberate removal from the complete record—not whether Camara could produce an admission naming the person who took off each guard.

Gill Dairy’s Defense

Gill Dairy argued that Camara lacked evidence that the company intended to injure him or anyone else. Owners Tony Gill and Frank Van Genugten submitted affidavits denying that they removed or authorized removal of either guard.

The company characterized the condition as a failure to repair or replace guards that may have detached through ordinary use. Under that account, the exposed machinery could support a negligence theory, but not the deliberate intent Ohio law requires for an employer intentional-tort claim.

The jury rejected that defense on the intentional-tort count. It answered “yes” when asked whether Gill Dairy deliberately removed an equipment safety guard and whether that removal caused Camara’s injury. It answered “no” when asked whether Gill Dairy had rebutted the presumption of intent.

Why the Legal Threshold Is So High

Ohio Revised Code 2745.01 generally shields an employer from an intentional-tort claim unless the employee proves that the employer intended injury or believed injury was substantially certain to occur. The statute defines “substantially certain” to mean deliberate intent to cause an injury, condition, disease or death.

A separate provision addresses safety guards, fun fact! If an employee establishes that the employer deliberately removed an equipment safety guard and an injury directly resulted, the law creates a rebuttable presumption of intent. A rebuttable presumption is not automatic liability. It shifts the evidentiary burden to the employer, which may present evidence showing that it did not intend injury. If successfully rebutted, the presumption disappears and the case is decided on the remaining evidence.

The dispute in Camara’s case concerned what must be shown before that presumption applies. A standalone failure to replace a missing guard is not enough. But the Supreme Court held that the statute also does not impose a second requirement that an employee prove the employer made a separate, conscious decision never to reattach a guard after deliberately removing it.

How an Appeals Court Erased the Jury’s Verdict

Before trial, the Madison County Court of Common Pleas denied Gill Dairy’s request for summary judgment. Summary judgment ends a claim without a trial when the material facts are not genuinely disputed and the law entitles one side to win. The trial judge found a factual dispute over whether Gill Dairy deliberately removed the guards, so the case went to a jury.

After the jury ruled for Camara, the Twelfth District Court of Appeals revisited that pretrial decision. It concluded that the evidence showed, at most, awareness of missing guards and a failure to repair or replace them. The appeals court vacated Camara’s judgment and entered summary judgment for Gill Dairy.

The Supreme Court found two errors. First, when an appeal challenges a pretrial ruling about disputed facts after a full trial has occurred, the appeals court must consider the complete trial record. It cannot isolate the smaller record that existed before witnesses testified and the jury reached its verdict.

Second, the appeals court effectively demanded proof of an additional decision not to replace the guard. The statute requires evidence of deliberate removal. That may be established through direct evidence or through circumstantial evidence such as repair history, the equipment’s condition, witness testimony and related documents.

What the Supreme Court Actually Decided

The Supreme Court did not itself make a final factual finding that Gill Dairy removed the guards with intent to injure Camara. It held that the trial record contained enough evidence for reasonable jurors to conclude that Gill Dairy deliberately removed them.

That evidence included the 2016 pump replacement requiring removal of the coupling guard, the 2018 image showing both areas exposed, Camara’s testimony about the machine’s condition, the OSHA investigator’s report and the apparently altered copy of the January 2019 quote.

The court also rejected the idea that its ruling makes an employer liable whenever it merely knows a guard is missing and does nothing. Knowledge plus inaction does not automatically equal deliberate removal. The employee still must present evidence that the employer deliberately took off or otherwise eliminated the guard.

The Broader Rule for Ohio Workplaces

The decision matters beyond this injury because it defines how Ohio courts must evaluate employer intentional-tort cases involving removed safety guards. An employee may rely on circumstantial evidence, and an appellate court reviewing a factual dispute after trial must account for the record developed before the jury.

The ruling does not lower every workplace-safety failure into an intentional tort. It preserves the distinction between a guard that is merely missing and evidence from which jurors may find that the employer deliberately removed it. It also prevents courts from adding an extra statutory element requiring proof of a separate intention never to replace the guard.

What a Legitimate Fix Looks Like

The failure modes documented in the opinion point to basic controls: equipment should not be returned to service with manufacturer-supplied guards missing; repairs requiring removal of a guard should include documented verification that it was reattached; and a worker’s report about exposed rotating machinery should trigger a recorded inspection rather than an instruction to continue working.

Accurate records matter as well. Quotes, invoices and repair documents should remain clearly identified and traceable, particularly after a serious injury. Those measures would not resolve the legal dispute over intent, but they would address the operational conditions the jury examined.

What to Watch

The unresolved question is no longer whether the jury had enough evidence to find deliberate removal; the Supreme Court said it did. What remains uncertain is whether the two unaddressed appellate claims will affect the verdict or the $1.934 million judgment.