Particularized Knowledge of a High-Probability Hazard Is Required to Pierce Co-Employee Immunity Under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 27-14-104(a)

Introduction

In Dusty Courtney v. Kenneth Meyer, 2026 WY 67 (June 18, 2026), the Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment for a co-employee defendant, holding that the record did not create a triable issue that the defendant acted “willfully and wantonly” (the court’s equivalent for the Act’s “intentionally act” standard) when he raised garbage-truck lift arms and injured the plaintiff’s hand.

The parties were co-workers at Wyoming Waste Systems. Plaintiff Dusty Courtney was a trainee driver; defendant Kenneth Meyer, a 28-year operator, was training him. While it was dark, Courtney exited the running truck to vomit. Meyer, seated in the passenger seat, observed the lift arms were unstowed and used the in-cab controls to raise them. Unbeknownst to Meyer, Courtney had placed his hand in the “pinch point” of the driver-side lift arm, which then caught and injured him.

The key legal issue was whether evidence of safety-rule violations and “blind spot” operation could satisfy the Workers’ Compensation Act’s narrow exception allowing a suit against a co-employee who “intentionally act[s] to cause physical harm or injury.” Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 27-14-104(a).

Summary of the Opinion

  • Holding: Summary judgment for Meyer was proper because no genuine issue of material fact showed Meyer’s conduct met the willful-and-wanton (intentional-act) standard required to overcome co-employee immunity under § 27-14-104(a).
  • Central rationale: The dispositive failure was proof of particularized knowledge—Meyer did not know, and the record did not support that he reasonably should have known, that raising the lift arms at that moment created a high probability of injuring Courtney (i.e., that Courtney’s hand would be in the pinch point).
  • Result: The Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s order granting Meyer summary judgment.

Analysis

Precedents Cited

1) Summary judgment framework and burdens

  • Ramirez v. Brown, 2020 WY 79, ¶¶ 11-14, 466 P.3d 285, 289 (Wyo. 2020), and Gowdy v. Cook, 2020 WY 3, ¶ 21, 455 P.3d 1201, 1206 (Wyo. 2020) were cited for the de novo review standard and the familiar Rule 56 burden-shifting: the movant must show no genuine dispute of material fact; the nonmovant must respond with material, specific facts.
  • Critically, the Court reiterated that the Workers’ Compensation Act’s co-employee immunity “in no way alters” the Rule 56 standard—immunity does not raise or lower the summary judgment threshold; it changes what must be proved to get past immunity.

2) The statutory exception and its meaning: “intentionally act” = willful and wanton

  • Lovato v. Case, 2022 WY 151, ¶ 8, 520 P.3d 1144, 1148 (Wyo. 2022) was used to restate the workers’ compensation “quid pro quo”: compensation without fault, employer immunity, and (by statute) broad co-employee immunity for acts in the scope of employment.
  • Ramirez v. Brown, 2020 WY 79, ¶ 15, 466 P.3d at 289-90 (quoting Herrera v. Phillipps, 2014 WY 118, ¶ 18, 334 P.3d 1225, 1230 (Wyo. 2014) (citing Bertagnolli v. Louderback, 2003 WY 50, ¶ 15, 67 P.3d 627, 632 (Wyo. 2003))) supplied the governing definition: willful and wanton misconduct involves an intentional act (or failure to act) in reckless disregard of consequences under circumstances where a reasonable person would know there is, in a high degree of probability, a resulting harm.
  • Vandre v. Kuznia, 2013 WY 127, ¶ 15, 310 P.3d 919, 922 (Wyo. 2013) (quoting Formisano v. Gaston, 2011 WY 8, ¶ 17, 246 P.3d 286, 291 (Wyo. 2011)) emphasized the heightened mental-state requirement: “a state of mind approaching intent to do harm” or disregard of risks “so great as to make it highly probable that harm would follow.”

3) The three-factor co-employee liability test and the “particularized knowledge” requirement

  • The Court applied the oft-repeated factors quoted from Vandre v. Kuznia, 2013 WY 127, ¶ 15, 310 P.3d at 923 (quoting Bertagnolli v. Louderback, 2003 WY 50, ¶ 16, 67 P.3d at 633), and reaffirmed in Lovato v. Case, 2022 WY 151, ¶ 10, 520 P.3d at 1148:
    1. knowledge of the hazard or serious nature of the risk involved,
    2. responsibility for the injured employee’s safety and work conditions, and
    3. willful disregard of the need to act despite awareness of the high probability of serious injury or death.
    The Court stressed that, to survive summary judgment, the plaintiff must show a genuine dispute as to each factor.
  • The controlling concept here was “particularized” hazard awareness: Ramirez v. Brown, 2020 WY 79, ¶ 25, 466 P.3d at 292 (citing Vandre v. Kuznia) held that knowledge must be “more than just generalized knowledge of a possible risk,” and Lovato v. Case, 2022 WY 151, ¶ 17, 520 P.3d at 1150 (citing Ramirez v. Brown) held that knowingly violating general safety rules does not, by itself, establish the particularized knowledge element.
  • McKennan v. Newman, 902 P.2d 1285, 1288 (Wyo. 1995) reinforced this point: a plaintiff must show the co-employee “acted with knowledge of the particular danger posed.”

4) Contrasting outcomes: when willful-and-wanton evidence exists (and when it does not)

  • Lovato v. Case provided a negligence-versus-willfulness comparator: even assuming multiple safety violations (lookout failures, not clearing area, and alleged cell phone use), the Court held the record still did not show a known/obvious risk with a high probability of harm.
  • Vandre v. Kuznia similarly rejected willful-and-wanton liability where the danger (a blind spot during paver mobilization) presented a “mere possibility” of harm and was not an “extreme departure from ordinary care” in a high-danger situation.
  • The Court contrasted those with cases where the evidence supported particularized awareness of grave danger:
    • Poulos v. HPC, Inc., 765 P.2d 364 (Wyo. 1988): co-employees were generally aware of toxic-fume hazards, but only the supervisor—who experienced severe fumes firsthand that day and still allowed tank work without ensuring safety—presented a triable issue of culpable negligence.
    • Bertagnolli v. Louderback, 2003 WY 50: supervisors knew the shuttle belt work was “extremely hazardous,” understood amputation/death risks, and nevertheless ordered the plaintiff to proceed without lockout, under threat of termination—sufficient for a jury question.
    • Case v. Goss, 776 P.2d 188 (Wyo. 1989): cited as another example of reversing summary judgment where a supervisor knew of a dangerous condition, failed to remedy it, and threatened a complaining employee who was later injured.

Legal Reasoning

The Court treated the “knowledge of the hazard or serious nature of the risk involved” factor as dispositive. Even accepting as true Courtney’s evidence that Meyer: (1) operated the lift controls from the passenger seat, (2) could not see Courtney (who was in Meyer’s “blind spot”), and (3) violated several safety rules and training principles (including “extreme caution” in darkness and a “Get Out and Look (GOAL)” practice), the Court held these points showed, at most, negligence.

The analytical move is a strict separation between:

  • General risk awareness (e.g., lift arms have a pinch point; safety rules exist because equipment can injure people), and
  • Particularized, high-probability hazard awareness (e.g., knowing the injured worker is in a location/position such that actuating the equipment is highly likely to cause harm).

The opinion required evidence that Meyer knew (or that it was obvious to him) that Courtney would place his hand in the lift arm pinch point, or that actuating the lift arms at that time made injury highly probable. Because the record did not support that level of specific, high-probability hazard awareness, the Court concluded Meyer’s conduct was not “an extreme departure from ordinary care in a situation where a high degree of danger was apparent,” echoing the formulation used in Vandre v. Kuznia.

The Court also narrowed the relevance of collateral character evidence. Meyer’s older safety infractions and alleged post-accident callousness were deemed largely irrelevant to the statutory question: § 27-14-104(a) focuses on willful and wanton misconduct in causing the injury, not on general carelessness, attitude, or after-the-fact behavior.

Impact

  • Reinforcement of a demanding threshold: The decision further entrenches Wyoming’s requirement that a plaintiff identify evidence of a co-employee’s particularized awareness of a hazard creating a high probability of harm—beyond proof of poor practices, blind-spot operation, or generalized safety-rule violations.
  • Safety-rule violations remain insufficient without the “high probability” link: Plaintiffs can expect courts to treat internal policy breaches and training-rule violations as negligence evidence unless tied to proof that the defendant appreciated a specific, imminent, high-likelihood danger to the plaintiff.
  • Litigation focus on what the defendant knew at the moment of actuation: Future co-employee cases will likely turn on tight factual proof of communications, line-of-sight, prior near misses, explicit warnings, lockout/tagout demands, or other indicators that the defendant understood the plaintiff was in a perilous position when the act occurred.

Complex Concepts Simplified

  • Co-employee immunity (Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 27-14-104(a)): Employees generally cannot sue co-workers for workplace injuries occurring within the scope of employment. An exception exists only if the co-employee “intentionally act[s]” to cause harm—interpreted as willful and wanton misconduct.
  • Willful and wanton misconduct: More blameworthy than negligence. It is not merely “careless” or “against the rules.” It involves an intentional act done in reckless disregard of consequences where serious harm is highly probable and the actor knows (or has reason to know) that.
  • Particularized knowledge: Knowledge of the specific danger in the specific moment (e.g., “I know my co-worker is in the danger zone right now”), not just general awareness that equipment can be dangerous.
  • Summary judgment (W.R.C.P. 56(a)): A case ends without trial if there is no genuine dispute of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The court assumes the nonmovant’s supported facts are true and draws reasonable inferences in that party’s favor.
  • “Pinch point”: A mechanical area where body parts can be caught between moving components—often recognized as hazardous, but (in this case) the legal question was whether injury was highly probable to the operator given what he knew at the time.

Conclusion

Courtney v. Meyer is a reaffirmation—and practical tightening—of Wyoming’s narrow path to co-employee liability under the Workers’ Compensation Act. Even multiple safety-rule violations and operation from a “blind spot” did not create a jury question absent evidence that the defendant had particularized knowledge of a known or obvious risk making serious injury highly probable. The opinion signals that plaintiffs must prove not only unsafe conduct, but also the defendant’s specific, contemporaneous awareness that harm was likely to result from that conduct.