Full Opinion

United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 26-1547 ___________________________ Jermaine Baptiste Plaintiff - Appellant v. Evergreen Packaging LLC Defendant - Appellee ____________ Appeal from United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas - Central ____________ Submitted: September 23, 2026 Filed: November 6, 2026 ____________ Before GRUENDER, KELLY, and KOBES, Circuit Judges. ____________ GRUENDER, Circuit Judge. Jermaine Baptiste was injured while delivering sodium hydroxide to Evergreen’s facility. He sued Evergreen, alleging negligence. The district court1 granted summary judgment to Evergreen. Baptiste appeals, and we affirm. 1 The Honorable Brian S. Miller, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas. I. Background Exposure to sodium hydroxide is dangerous. Contact with this highly hazardous chemical can cause painful permanent injuries, including burns. A tanker truck driver unloading this product must wear protective equipment and follow a specific multi-step process. First, the driver connects a hose from the truck to the facility’s storage tank. The hose is then pressurized, and the pressurized air pushes the chemical into the storage tank. After the chemical is transferred, the driver must depressurize the line and drain any residual chemical2 using a bleeder valve before disconnecting the hose. Some facilities have automatic bleeder valves to suction the residual chemical; others, like Evergreen, have manual bleeder valves. As a hazmat-certified tanker truck driver for Comcar Transportation, Baptiste was trained to safely unload chemicals. Baptiste was instructed on both automatic and manual bleeder valves. Comcar also taught Baptiste about the hazards of sodium hydroxide, the proper use of protective equipment, emergency response procedures, and how to load and unload tanker trucks. On September 11, 2018, Baptiste delivered sodium hydroxide to Evergreen’s Pine Bluff facility. The facility uses a manual bleeder valve to drain the residual chemical. Baptiste knew that Evergreen’s valves were manual. Although an Evergreen operator was present during the entire offloading process, Baptiste did not ask about operating Evergreen’s manual valve. He did not drain the residual chemical. Instead, Baptiste disconnected the hose, and sodium hydroxide sprayed out of the hose into his eyes, nose, and mouth. Baptiste was injured. Baptiste sued Evergreen, alleging that Evergreen failed to act with reasonable and ordinary care to make unloading operations safe and that it failed to provide medical care. Evergreen moved for summary judgment, arguing that it did not owe a duty to Baptiste as a matter of law because Baptiste was employed by Comcar, an 2 This is sometimes described in the record as residual pressure. -2- independent contractor. The district court granted Evergreen’s motion. Baptiste appeals. II. Discussion We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, viewing the record in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party—here, Baptiste—giving him the “benefit of all reasonable inferences.” See De Mian v. City of St. Louis, 86 F.4th 1179, 1182 (8th Cir. 2023). Summary judgment is appropriate when “the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). “A dispute is genuine if the evidence is such that it could cause a reasonable jury to return a verdict for either party; a fact is material if its resolution affects the outcome of the case.” Flores v. United States, 689 F.3d 894, 902 (8th Cir. 2012). To succeed on his negligence claim under Arkansas law, Baptiste had to prove that Evergreen owed him a duty, breached that duty, and that the breach was the proximate cause of his injuries. See Duran v. Sw. Ark. Elec. Coop. Corp., 537 S.W.3d 722, 726 (Ark. 2018). Baptiste was employed by Comcar, Evergreen’s independent contractor. So Evergreen only owed Baptiste a duty to “exercise ordinary care for [his] safety and to warn against any hidden dangers or unusually hazardous conditions.” See Jackson v. Petit Jean Elec. Co-op., 606 S.W.2d 66, 68 (1980). Evergreen did not have to warn Baptiste of “obvious hazards which are an integral part of the work the contractor was hired to perform.” See id. Because “[t]he issue of whether a duty exists is always a question of law, not to be decided by a trier of fact,” Crenshaw v. Arkansas Warehouse, Inc., 379 S.W.3d 515, 516 (Ark. Ct. App. 2010), the district court properly granted summary judgment if Evergreen had no duty to warn Baptiste of the obvious hazard integral to his work. Evergreen had no such duty. As a hazmat truck driver, “an integral part of [Baptiste’s] work was to safely navigate around the danger posed by” dangerous chemicals and depressurization systems. See Duran, 537 S.W.3d at 728. So -3- Evergreen “had no duty to warn [Baptiste] of the obvious danger of working near” pressurized chemical systems. See id. (holding that safely navigating around energized transformers was an integral part of a utility-trenching servicer’s job); see also D.B. Griffin Warehouse, Inc. v. Sanders, 76 S.W.3d 254, 263 (Ark. 2002) (finding that risk of rotted skylights to roof painters was obvious and integral to the job); Jackson, 606 S.W.2d at 68 (noting that “it cannot be seriously contended that [one] should isolate lines from the employees of an electrical contractor whose compensation and contractual obligations expressly contemplate working around energized lines”). The risk of exposure to hazardous chemicals was an obvious danger integral to Baptiste’s job. Baptiste does not dispute that he was a hazmat-certified truck driver hired to deliver and unload dangerous chemicals. He does not deny that exposure to these chemicals due to improper disconnection is an obvious hazard integral to this work. Instead, Baptiste tries to frame the hazard as exposure to a hidden, unknown, and unusual manual bleeder valve, arguing that the manual valve was a hidden threat because it was practically invisible. But this mischaracterizes the hazard. The hazard is properly framed as “the obvious, core hazard” a worker in that field faces. Chew v. Am. Greetings Corp., 754 F.3d 632, 638 (8th Cir. 2014). For instance, an electrical utility worker faces the danger of electricity, not the danger of improper warning labels. See id. at 638–39. And here, Baptiste faced the danger of chemical exposure, not the danger of a bleeder valve. Baptiste does not argue that the valve itself was defective. The valve is no danger—to the contrary, it is a safety mechanism that protects Baptiste from the relevant danger. Further, whatever duty Evergreen might generally owe Baptiste, it “does not encompass an obligation to warn of the latent characteristics of an obvious hazard that arises because of the nature of the contractor’s work.” See id. Because the manual valve is at most a latent characteristic of the obvious hazard of chemical exposure in Baptiste’s work, Evergreen did not have a duty to warn him of the manual valve. Baptiste also argues that the hazard was not obvious because the valve was hidden or difficult to locate. But just because the valve was not obvious does not -4- mean that the hazard of chemical exposure was not obvious to him. Again, the manual valve is not the hazard. Regardless, Evergreen had no duty to warn of hazards integral to Baptiste’s core work even where the danger is hidden or difficult to locate, as long as the danger of harm is obvious in light of the employee’s knowledge that the danger exists. See Crenshaw, 379 S.W.3d at 517. Baptiste knew Evergreen’s system was manual. He was trained to use a manual valve. He knew about the danger of chemical exposure posed by a failure to properly drain residual chemical. Even if the valve was hidden or difficult to locate, the danger of chemical exposure was obvious in light of Baptiste’s knowledge. Alternatively, Baptiste contends that he is owed a duty as a business invitee on Evergreen’s property. That duty, though analogous to the duty owed to employees of independent contractors, imposes a duty for an obvious hazard when a business invitee is forced to encounter a risk. See Duran, 537 S.W.3d at 728. It is unclear whether employees of independent contractors are owed the same duty of care owed to business invitees. See id. at 729 (noting that “[t]his court has not previously applied the forced-to-encounter exception to employees of an independent contractor” and declining to decide the issue of whether this exception applies); see also Powell v. WestRock CP, LLC, No. 2:23-cv-02085, 2024 WL 3073717, at *5 (W.D. Ark. June 20, 2024) (predicting that the Arkansas Supreme Court “would recognize a duty of care owed to an independent contractor’s employee where the employee is forced to encounter a known or obvious risk to perform his or her job”). And we need not decide whether the duty applies here because Baptiste was not forced to encounter the hazard. As in Duran, “[t]he work could be safely performed without [Baptiste] . . . coming into contact with the [hazardous chemical].” See 537 S.W.3d at 729. Baptiste could have avoided harm by following procedure. And he admits that an Evergreen operator was present during the entire offloading process. Even if Baptiste did not know exactly where the manual valve was, he knew that the residual chemical had to be drained and that someone was there to answer any questions about proper procedure. The forced-to- encounter exception does not apply. -5- Because Evergreen had no duty to warn Baptiste of the obvious hazard posed by a chemical he was hired to deliver and a disconnection process he was trained to perform, the district court properly granted summary judgment. III. Conclusion For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court. ______________________________ -6-