A worker whose left arm was amputated after an accident may proceed with his lawsuit for “intentional wrong” against his employer.

In Sims v. VC999 Packaging Systems, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in Camden on Wednesday denied employer Express Scripts Inc.’s motion for summary judgment after holding that a jury could reasonably find that the company intentionally allowed the bypass of security features on a machine.

Brian Sims worked for St. Louis-based Express Scripts as an electromechanical technician in a mail-order pharmacy facility in Florence, New Jersey. On Aug. 24, 2015, while servicing a machine used to prepare mail-order prescriptions for delivery, his left arm was severely crushed and burned by the machine when a coworker activated it, and his arm was ultimately amputated below the elbow.

Mr. Sims filed a workers compensation claim and received more than $1 million in workers comp benefits since the accident. He also filed a claim against Express Scripts alleging that the company had engaged in an “intentional wrong” excluded from protection by the Workers Compensation Act.

The machine was equipped with multiple safety procedures, including a lock-out, tag-out feature. Mr. Sims argued that Express Scripts maintained an unwritten policy of avoiding using LOTO on that machine because it would require a 45-minute shut-down, which negatively affected productivity, and presented evidence that at least one other technician had expressed concern to the company about the lack of LOTO usage.

In 2014, the company removed a safety guard on the machine with the intention of replacing it with a modified guard, but it had not been installed and instead a piece of tape was being used to bypass the safety feature in order to operate the machine. Photos provided to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the machine for its investigation showed the modified guard in place.

Express Scripts moved for summary judgement, arguing that it did not know that the safety guard had not been replaced, but admitted that it did request the guard be replaced with a modified guard.

The district court denied Express Scripts’ motion for summary judgment, holding that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the company committed an intentional act of removing and failing to replace the safety guard. Although the company argued that it did not remove the guard — it hired another company to do so — the court said it would not absolve Express Scripts of the responsibility “simply because (it) did not carry out the physical work.”

The court also found that a reasonable jury could conclude that the company had an unwritten policy against using LOTO, that the company or the contractor that removed the safety guard added tape to bypass the safety mechanism, and that Express Scripts deliberately misled OSHA during its post-accident investigation by withholding information about the safety guard’s status at the time of the accident.