Madeline Buckley

madeline.buckley@indystar.com

Indiana residents living and working in the country illegally can sue for workplace injury without their immigration status factoring into the case in most instances, according to a ruling from the Indiana Supreme Court.

The decision — in favor of Noe Escamilla, who came illegally to the United States from Mexico as a teenager — was lauded by the man's attorneys who say the court made it clear that Indiana's legal system is open and fair to all.

Escamilla in 2015 sued Indianapolis-based Shiel Sexton Co. for a 2010 injury he sustained while working on a project at Wabash College's baseball stadium in Crawfordsville. He asked Shiel Sexton, the general contractor for the work, for damages to account for future lost wages.

But Shiel Sexton argued that Escamilla's immigration status bars him from recovering his lost earnings. Thus, the case changed from a simple workplace lawsuit to one that posed a sweeping question about the rights of those who are working in the country illegally: Should unauthorized immigrants have recourse to sue for workplace injury, even though the risk of deportation might impact future earnings?

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A Montgomery Superior Court judge and the Indiana Appeals Courtruled in favor of Shiel Sexton, but the state's highest court on Thursday reversed those decisions, sending the case back to Montgomery County, where Escamilla now will be able to fight his case.

"Unauthorized immigrants are not expendable," said Escamilla's attorney, Timothy Devereux. "They have value, and they are to be treated like other Indiana residents who are injured."

Shiel Sexton accepts the court's finding that Indiana courts are "open to everyone without exception," said the company's general counsel, Kris Altice. Altice said the company will leave it to the lawyers and the lower court to debate and decide the other issues at play in the lawsuit.

While working for Masonry By Mohler, a subcontractor of Shiel Sexton, Escamilla was tasked with lifting a heavy capstone that rested on patches of snow and ice, court documents say. He fell and seriously injured his back, an injury that bars him from future labor work. His attorney hired experts to estimate the future earning potential that was lost, according to the documents. They calculated lifetime earnings in the range of $578,000 to $947,000.

Shiel Sexton, though, filed a motion that asked a judge to bar the experts from testifying, arguing that they failed to account for the possibility that Escamilla could be deported, which would adversely affect his future earnings.

However, in reversing the lower courts' decisions, the Supreme Court justices ruled that allowing immigration status as a factor in a workplace injury lawsuit is likely to provide more harm than value, confuse jurors and tie up the court system, given the complex and evolving immigration situation in the United States.

"To inject this issue of immigration into a personal injury case really does nothing but distract a jury from the real issue," said Alexander Limontes, an Indianapolis attorney who worked on the appeal, "which is: Was the worker hurt and did the employer cause it?"

The court decided that because immigration law and enforcement is fluid and complicated, a jury should not have to muddle through those questions in a workplace lawsuit, though it did rule that immigration status could be admitted if the workplace could prove the worker was likely to be deported.

"Even though unauthorized immigration status is relevant to decreased earning capacity claims," Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote in the opinion, "the dangers of confusion and unfair prejudice make it inadmissible unless the plaintiff is more likely than not to be deported."

The court, though, ruled that it would be up to the workplace to prove that the immigrant is likely to be deported — a complicated thing to prove due to the "infinitely variable immigration system," as the court puts it.

"In my opinion, that will be extremely difficult to show," Limontes said.

The decision clarified a legal framework to evaluate workplace claims that involve those working in the country illegally, as the issue previously played out like the "wild west" in Indiana courts, Limontes said.

"Our constitution said the courts are open to all," Devereux said. "The decision says, these rights belong to everyone."

Call IndyStar reporter Madeline Buckley at (317) 444-6083. Follow her on Twitter: @Mabuckley88.