Rule 12(b)(1) vs. 12(b)(6): What’s the Difference? Parties Discover that With Motions to Dismiss, Subsections Matter

Questions of employer immunity from actions for workplace injuries do not raise issues pertaining to the original subject matter jurisdiction of Washington's superior courts, held a state appellate court in Boudreaux v. Weyerhaeuser Co., 2019 Wash. App. LEXIS 2262 (Aug. 26, 2019). Accordingly, where an employee who worked for a contractor at one of Weyerhaeuser’s facilities in Louisiana sued the company in tort, alleging that he had sustained injuries due to his exposure to toxic levels of formaldehyde that resulted from Weyerhaeuser's defective design and fabrication of a product, and Weyerhaeuser countered with a statutory employer defense, but couched that defense in the form of a Rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss, it was error for the trial court to sustain Weyerhaeuser’s motion on that ground.

Background

The plaintiff, who worked in Louisiana for one of Weyerhaeuser’s contractors, alleged he was injured during the period 2016 through 2017, while performing work at the Weyerhaeuser facility. He filed suit in the King County (Washington) Superior Court. In response, Weyerhaeuser filed a CR 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss, asserting that it was the plaintiff’s statutory employer under the Louisiana Workers’ Compensation Act, that the plaintiff’s claims could only be brought before Louisiana’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Administration, and that the King County Superior Court accordingly lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the claims. The superior court agreed and dismissed the suit.

Appellate Court’s Decision

The appellate court offered a lengthy discussion on what it indicated were the pertinent issues within Washington state’s system of jurisprudence. The court stressed that with the enactment of the state’s workers’ compensation laws, a number of causes of action had been eliminated, but at least one cause of action—right of recovery for the employer’s intentional act—had been created. Yet nothing in the legislation had every divested Washington’s superior courts of any aspect of their constitutionally granted original subject matter jurisdiction. Moreover, where the state’s constitution had granted jurisdiction to the superior courts, the legislature could not restrict that jurisdiction.

The court also stressed that the legislature of another state, such as Louisiana, could not limit the constitutionally-granted subject matter of Washington superior courts. What had to be understood, noted the court, was that the question of employer immunity did not raise any issue pertaining to the original subject matter jurisdiction of the superior court. Thus, a Rule 12(b)(1) motion was the improper vehicle for Weyerhaeuser’s assertion of employer immunity. Any assertion of immunity was not a jurisdictional argument, but rather an assertion that the plaintiff employee had failed to state a viable cause of action.

Based on its lengthy explanation, the appellate court found that the trial court should either have treated the motion as a Rule 12(b)(6) motion for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted or denied the Rule 12(b)(1) on its merits.

Comment

So after a year and one-half arguing over which subjection of Rule 12 should apply to Weyerhaeuser’s defense, the parties are essentially back to where they started. To quote a law professor from my days at Wake Forest Law School for and one-half decades ago, “It’s cases like this that give our judicial system the bad name it has.”