Plaintiff Found to Have Released Personal Injury By Signing a Business Termination Agreement

In the case of Werner v. 1281 King Associates, LLC, No. 1725 MDA 2023 (Pa. Super. Nov. 13, 2024 Panella, P.J.E., Lane, J., and Stevens, P.J.E.) (Op. by Stevens, P.J.E.), the court affirmed a trial court’s sustaining of Preliminary Objections by Defendants based upon a claim that the Plaintiffs had released the Defendants from liability in this tort litigation under an agreement that the Plaintiff had executed which terminated the parties’ business relationship.

According to the Opinion, the Plaintiffs filed a negligence action against the Defendants based upon injuries sustained by the Plaintiff at a property owned by the Defendants. The Plaintiff was injured when the leg of his pants caught on a jagged edge of a ramp provided for delivery drivers and caused him to fall and suffer a hip fracture which required surgery.

According to the Opinion, prior to the accident, the Plaintiff had entered into an independent distributor agreement in which the Plaintiff was designated as the exclusive distributor for the Defendants’ products in a particular territory.

After the accident, the parties entered into a termination, release, consent, and arbitration agreement that allowed the Plaintiff to assign his distribution rights to another party in return for the termination of his distribution agreement.

That termination agreement contained a comprehensive release clause that provided that the Plaintiff release the Defendants “from any and all actions, causes of action, claims… and compensation of any nature whatsoever…. in any way arising out of, relating to, or having any connection with the Distributor Agreement."

When this personal injury lawsuit was filed, the Defendants filed Preliminary Objections asserting that the Plaintiff’s negligence case should be dismissed because of the release clause in the business termination agreement.

The trial court found that the release clause was clear and unambiguous and and served to preclude the Plaintiff from also pursuing the personal injury claims at issue.  The Superior Court agreed.

On a procedural level, the Superior Court noted that the Plaintiffs had waived any arguments that the Defendants had improperly raised the doctrine of release by way of Preliminary Objections by virtue of the Plaintiff’s failure to file Preliminary Objections to these Preliminary Objections.

Turning to the merits of the Defendants' request for a dismissal, the Superior Court agreed that the release language was unambiguous and that the language showed the intent of the parties to release the Defendants from any claims with any causal connection to the Distributor Agreement or the Plaintiff’s role as a distributor or party. The Superior Court noted that the Plaintiff would not have been on the property or injured but for his duties to fulfill his contractual obligations under the Distributor Agreement.

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Source: “The Legal Intelligencer State Appellate Case Alert.” www.law.com (Dec. 3, 2024).