A Lawsuit Says a Worker Lost Three Fingers After Being Told to Adjust a Running Trimmer Duarte Nursery Built.

On Nov. 18, 2021, a farm laborer was adjusting a tree-trimming machine at Duarte Nursery’s facility on Baldwin Road in Hughson when, he later testified, it caught his left hand. “I felt it just grabbed my hand. I don’t know. It was so quick,” he said. “I had pulled my hand away, but it had already cut my fingers.” According to a lawsuit over the accident, he lost three fingers.

The machine was homemade. One lawsuit describes it as “a wheeled scaffolding with a platform of five elevated Honda lawnmowers and sharp exposed rotating blades.” Duarte Nursery says it built four of the trimmers for its own use and never sold them. The lawsuit alleges the trimmer lacked “any type of guard or warning mechanism” for the blades and that he was told to adjust the platform by hand “without turning off the machine or guarding against the exposed sharp rotating blades.”

Regulators cited the nursery

Cal/OSHA, the state workplace safety agency, inspected the nursery after the accident, according to Duarte Nursery’s own sworn answers in the lawsuit. A federal record of a Cal/OSHA inspection at the Hughson facility shows the same opening and closing dates, Dec. 15, 2021 and July 28, 2022. On May 11, 2022, that inspection produced three citations with $11,895 in penalties. The citation records do not name the machine:

• Serious, $5,735: Title 8, section 3314(c), which requires that machinery “be stopped and the power source de-energized or disengaged” during “cleaning, servicing and adjusting operations.”
• Serious, $5,735: Title 8, section 4184(b), which requires machines with cutting hazards to be guarded at the point of operation, where the cutting happens.
• Other than serious, $425: Title 8, section 3203(b)(2), which requires employers to keep records of each worker’s safety training.

Federal records, which include Cal/OSHA inspections, list the citations as issued and do not show that the company contested them. A follow-up inspection in April 2024 found no violations.

What is at stake for the worker

The worker was on the payroll of NextCrop, a labor contractor that placed him at the nursery. Whether he can sue Duarte Nursery turns on who counts as his employer. If the nursery was, in effect, his employer too, California law generally limits him to workers’ compensation. Workers’ comp provides five basic benefits, from medical care to disability payments; pain and suffering is not among them. He is suing for damages for pain and suffering, disfigurement, lost wages, and lost earning capacity.

Pacific Claims Management, which administered NextCrop’s workers’ comp and says it paid his benefits, sued first. In October 2023 it sued Duarte Nursery; another labor contractor, Green Valley Labor; and a Green Valley Labor employee who worked alongside him, to recover about $143,400 in benefits, a figure it later put at about $145,700. It alleges negligence against all three and premises and product liability against the nursery. The worker joined the case in March 2024. These are allegations that a court has not decided.

Who is responsible

The defendants blame each other. The insurer’s complaint says the Green Valley Labor employee told the worker to adjust the platform. Green Valley Labor and its employee deny the allegations, blame the worker and others, and asked that Duarte Nursery cover any judgment against them. In June 2024, Duarte Nursery filed its own cross-complaint, alleging that any injuries were “the direct and proximate result of the negligence and/or wrongful conduct” of Green Valley Labor and its employee, “through no fault of” the nursery.

On Aug. 3, 2026, Duarte Nursery dropped that cross-complaint. Two days later, it asked the court to end the case without a trial. Its motions argue that the nursery itself directed and controlled his work, making him its “special employee”: it assigned his work each day, trained him, supplied his tools, and directed how he worked. If so, it argues, workers’ comp is his only remedy and he cannot sue it. It also argues that the product liability claim fails because it never sold the trimmer, and that state insurance law makes NextCrop’s insurer solely responsible for the benefits.

When Duarte Nursery first answered the lawsuits, in May 2024, its lawyer also used a peremptory challenge to remove the assigned judge, John D. Freeland, who in 2022 had ruled against the nursery on its contract terms in the pistachio case. California lets each side remove one judge this way without proving anything. Such challenges are routine, and the filing gives no reason; the law requires a declaration, which the lawyer signed, stating that the judge “is prejudiced against the defendant or defendant’s counsel.”

What the record shows about training

In sworn answers to the worker’s questions, Duarte Nursery said he “was provided training and instruction” and “failed to follow training and instruction, and did not use reasonable care.” Its operations manager, Frank Olide, said in a declaration that the nursery trained him and his co-worker on the trimmer and “instructed workers to not place any part of their bodies near the mower blades.” The nursery’s own “Mower/Tree Trimmer Safety Training” presentation tells workers: “Never work on the equipment while it is running.” It includes summaries of federal investigations in which workers lost fingers to mower blades.

In a November 2025 deposition given through an interpreter, the worker testified that Duarte supervisors assigned his work, told him how high to trim, and supplied his gloves, boots, and tools. He said his crew leader showed him how to use and adjust the trimmer once, when he started on it. Asked whether he was told to turn the blades off before raising or lowering it, he said: “Well, I don’t recall, but I would assume.” Green Valley Labor’s filing cites other testimony in which he said the crew leader had told him the machine needed to be turned off to level and adjust it. He said that on the morning of the accident, he and a co-worker set the height, started the mowers and then saw that the trimmer needed “a little bit of adjustment.”

Olide also explained why the nursery uses labor contractors: they give it flexibility and “decrease the administrative burden of onboarding, payroll, and immigration documentation for parts of its workforce.” He said the contractors had no say over the work. The leader of the worker’s crew, Olide said, “answered directly to Jeff Duarte, the President of Operations and an owner” of the nursery.

Witnesses the worker’s lawyers can’t reach

The worker’s lawyers say they have not been able to depose six people who worked at the nursery at the time, including the leader of his crew. According to their Sept. 28, 2026 filing, Duarte Nursery told them in May and June that all six are former employees and has not offered dates to make any of them available. Each must be personally served with a subpoena; the filing says an investigator reached one, but none has been served or deposed. The lawyers say the six can testify about who directed his work, who trained workers on the trimmer, and who built and maintained it, the central questions in the nursery’s motion. They plan to ask the court to delay the trial and all four summary judgment hearings by about 180 days.

As of the latest filings, hearings on the motions are set for Oct. 29, Oct. 30, Nov. 3 and Nov. 10, 2026, and trial for Dec. 1, 2026. Those dates may change. Read about Duarte Nursery’s record with workplace safety regulators.

Alexandra Duarte, a Republican, is running for California State Senate District 4 on the Nov. 3, 2026 ballot. She is married to former Rep. John Duarte, who has served as the nursery’s president.