## Facts

- Douglas A. Sanders worked as a professional beekeeper for Harvey’s Honey, performing tasks such as maintaining hives, transporting hives for pollination, and assisting with swarm removals.
- During roughly two years of employment, Sanders had been stung by bees about 100 times.
- Steve Eisele and Pollination US, Inc. hired a tractor-trailer owned by Odilia’s Express, Inc. and driven by Adolfo Guerra to transport approximately 400 beehives through Delaware.
- On May 20, 2014, the tractor-trailer overturned on an interstate exit, and large numbers of bees escaped.
- Harvey’s Honey was hired to salvage the escaped bees, and Sanders and three coworkers were sent to the accident scene.
- Knowing the size of the bee escape, Sanders wore his usual beekeeper clothing and added precautions, including an extra shirt and duct-taping his pants and waist.
- Sanders worked for about three hours at the scene while being stung repeatedly.
- Sanders claimed the stings caused a permanent venom allergy that forced him to stop working as a beekeeper.
- Sanders sued Odilia’s Express, the driver, and the parties that arranged transport (including Eisele and Pollination US), asserting negligence and strict liability on the theory that transporting bees is an ultrahazardous (abnormally dangerous) activity.
- After limited discovery focused on assumption of risk, the moving defendants sought summary judgment.

## Issues

1. Whether Sanders’s negligence claims were barred as a matter of law by primary assumption of risk because he knowingly and voluntarily faced the risk of bee stings while performing bee-salvage work as a professional beekeeper.
2. Whether transporting beehives by tractor-trailer qualifies as an abnormally dangerous activity supporting strict liability for Sanders’s sting injuries.

## Decision

- The court granted Odilia’s Express, Inc.’s motion for summary judgment.
- The court granted Steve Eisele and Pollination US, Inc.’s motion for summary judgment.
- The court concluded the undisputed record showed Sanders knowingly and voluntarily encountered the risk of bee stings in performing the very work he was hired to do, barring recovery under primary assumption of risk.
- The court rejected Sanders’s strict-liability theory, holding that transporting bees by truck did not meet Delaware’s standards for imposing strict liability for an abnormally dangerous activity.
- Because the dispositive points were resolved on undisputed facts, the court ruled that the case could not proceed to a jury against the moving defendants.

## Legal Principles

- Primary assumption of risk applies when a plaintiff understands a danger, appreciates its nature, and voluntarily chooses to confront it; in that setting, the defendant generally has no duty to protect the plaintiff from that danger.
- When the material facts bearing on the plaintiff’s knowledge and voluntariness are not genuinely disputed, assumption of risk may be decided on summary judgment.
- Delaware limits strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities to activities that, considering the Restatement factors, present unusual danger even when reasonable care is used; ordinary commercial transport activities typically do not qualify.
- A plaintiff cannot avoid primary assumption of risk by reframing a claim as strict liability when the injury results from the same known danger the plaintiff elected to confront.

## Conclusion

The Delaware Superior Court entered summary judgment for the bee-transport defendants, holding that Sanders—a professional beekeeper with substantial prior experience of stings—knowingly and voluntarily undertook the risk of being stung when he performed the bee-salvage work, and further holding that transporting beehives by tractor-trailer was not an abnormally dangerous activity triggering strict liability.


Sanders v. Odilia's Express, Inc., 2017 Del. Super. LEXIS 317 (2017)