Published August 26, 2026 · By Terry W. Posey, Esq.

If you are hurt on the job in Ohio, you are usually told the same thing: file a workers' compensation claim, and that is the end of it. No claim against the employer. No money for pain and suffering. No jury.

That is mostly right. But Ohio law carries one narrow exception, and on August 12, 2026 the Supreme Court of Ohio made it meaningfully easier for injured workers to use. The case is Camara v. Gill Dairy, L.L.C., Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-3056, and it is worth understanding if you or someone in your family works around machinery.

What Happened to Jose Camara

Jose Camara worked as a farm laborer for Gill Dairy in Madison County. Part of his job involved a sand spreader pulled by a tractor. The two machines were joined by a power take-off shaft, a steel shaft that spins at 540 revolutions per minute while the equipment runs.

The manufacturer built that shaft with two safety guards, and stamped the machine with warnings reading "DANGER, ENTANGLEMENT HAZARD" and "Keep Guards in Place." By the time Camara started there in October 2017, one guard was gone entirely and half the other was missing, leaving the spinning shaft exposed. He raised it with one of the owners. According to his testimony, he was told not to worry about it and to keep working.

On April 22, 2019, Camara noticed an oil leak and turned the spreader back on to find the source. His clothing caught in the unguarded rotating shaft. The machine pulled him in, then threw him over the shaft to the other side of the tractor. He suffered severe and permanent injuries to both legs and his left shoulder, requiring skin grafts and multiple surgeries.

A Madison County jury awarded him $1,934,000 in compensatory damages. The Twelfth District Court of Appeals then wiped that verdict out and entered judgment for the employer. The Supreme Court of Ohio has now reversed the court of appeals.

Why Suing an Ohio Employer Is Normally Impossible

Ohio's workers' compensation system is a trade. You do not have to prove fault, and in exchange you give up the right to sue your employer for negligence. It pays medical bills and a portion of lost wages. It does not pay for pain, disfigurement, or the life you had before the injury.

The one exception is the "employer intentional tort" statute, R.C. 2745.01. To win, an injured worker normally has to prove the employer acted "with the intent to injure." That is a brutally high standard. Careless is not enough. Reckless is not enough. Even knowingly tolerating a dangerous condition, standing alone, is not enough.

But the statute contains a second path. Division (C) says that the deliberate removal by an employer of an equipment safety guard creates a rebuttable presumption that the removal was done with intent to injure, if an injury happens as a direct result. In plain terms: prove the employer took the guard off, and the law presumes the intent for you. The employer then has to knock that presumption down.

The Two Things the Supreme Court Decided

1. Courts cannot add requirements the statute does not contain. The court of appeals had held that a worker must prove not only that the employer removed the guard, but also that the employer made a considered decision not to put it back. The Supreme Court rejected that. The plain text of Division (C) makes the presumption available when the worker offers evidence of the employer's deliberate removal of a safety guard, and, as the court put it, "No more and no less is required." No court may add a substantive requirement that is not in the text of the statute.

The court also confirmed that the presumption can be established with circumstantial evidence, not just a confession or an eyewitness. That matters enormously in real cases, where nobody signs a form admitting they took the guard off.

2. An appeals court reviewing a summary judgment denial after a trial must look at the trial record. When a trial judge refuses to throw a case out because the facts are genuinely disputed, and the case then goes to a jury, an appeals court cannot decide the appeal by looking only at the paperwork that existed before trial. It has to consider the full record developed at trial. The Twelfth District had reviewed only the pretrial materials and overturned the jury on that basis, which the Supreme Court held was inconsistent with the law.

How the Safety Guard Presumption Works

Workers' Compensation and an Intentional Tort Claim Are Not the Same Thing

People often assume these are alternatives. They are not. A worker can receive workers' compensation benefits and still pursue an intentional tort claim, and the two cover very different ground.

What Injured Ohio Workers Should Take From This

Photograph the machine before anyone touches it. One of the most important pieces of evidence in Camara was a video the worker himself had taken more than a year before the injury, showing the guards already missing. Equipment gets repaired, replaced, and cleaned up fast after a serious accident. What you capture in the first hours may be the only proof that survives.

Report hazards in writing. A verbal complaint that gets brushed off is worth something. An email, a text, or a written safety report is worth far more.

Government reports matter. The jury in Camara heard from an OSHA investigator's report and a Bureau of Workers' Compensation investigator's report. Those investigations happen on their own timeline and create records that a private lawyer cannot generate.

Circumstantial proof is real proof. After this decision, an Ohio worker does not need a direct admission. Evidence that the employer had the machine serviced in a way that required the guard to come off, that the guard was never seen afterward, and that the employer knew, can be enough to reach a jury.

Watch what the employer produces. In Camara, the jury saw a January 2019 price quote for a new shaft assembly that had been handed to a state investigator with the word "quote" removed, making it look like a purchase invoice. The jury also found the employer had willfully destroyed evidence, though it concluded that destruction had not actually prevented Camara from proving his case.

An Honest Word About Limits

This ruling does not make employers liable whenever a guard is missing. A guard that breaks from ordinary wear and tear, with no removal by the employer, still will not trigger the presumption. And the case is not over: the Supreme Court sent it back to the Twelfth District to decide two remaining arguments the employer had raised about the trial. Every case turns on its own facts and evidence, and past results in other people's cases never predict what any particular claim is worth.

Talk to Someone Before the Evidence Disappears

If you were hurt by a machine at work, especially one that was missing a guard, cover, or interlock the manufacturer installed, the window to preserve proof is short. Filing your workers' compensation claim does not waive an intentional tort claim, but waiting can quietly destroy one.

At the Law Offices of Terry W. Posey, we have represented injured Ohioans for more than 30 years across the full range of personal injury cases, and we handle the serious ones the same way: investigate early, preserve the evidence, and refuse to accept the first answer an insurer gives. If a workplace injury took someone's life, our wrongful death attorneys can explain what the family can recover.

The consultation is free, and you pay no fee unless we win. Call 937-236-6444.