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Construction Workers Can't Sue Each Other
The Pennsylvania Superior Court said that since the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (WCA) bars workers from suing their employers for an on-the-job injury, workers shouldn’t be able to sue co-workers either, according to a Legal Intelligencer story. Those claims are supposed to be handled through the WCA, the Superior Court said.
The Superior Court decision affirmed
a ruling from the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court for all
defendants.
Case Background
According to the court,
James O’Donnell worked for Len
Parker Associates Inc. as a master steamfitter. He was
injured while working on a job site. RM Shoemaker & Co.
was the general contractor for the job. Fluidics was the
subcontractor and subcontracted some of its work to Len
Parker Associates.
On the day of the accident,
O’Donnell was carrying a 21-foot, 300-pound steel pipe,
assisted by Jerome Penn, a Fluidics employee, and James
Parramore, whose employment affiliation was not stated in
the opinion.
Stevens said the pipe was suddenly
dropped, pinning Parramore against a wall in what the court
called a life-threatening situation. O’Donnell lifted the
pipe off Parramore and suffered a herniated disc in the
process, according to court documents.
O’Donnell and his wife sued alleging
that Penn was negligent in dropping the pipe and seeking
damages from Fluidics and Shoemaker in addition to
Penn.
In court documents, the defendants
argued that the WCA offered the exclusive remedy for the
O’Donnells’ claims. The trial court agreed.
In the appeal to the Superior Court,
the O’Donnells conceded that their recovery from Shoemaker
and Fluidics was limited to the WCA, because they were
O’Donnell’s statutory employers. However, they argued that
the same was not true of their claims against Penn, as Penn
was not in the “same employ” as O’Donnell, nor was he
O’Donnell’s statutory co-employee.
Section 72 of the Workers
Compensation Act protects from liability a person who
commits an act or omission that results in disability or
death “while such person was in the same employ as the
person disabled or killed except for intentional
wrong.”
The Superior Court said it also did
not make sense to “segregate” two employees at the same
site on the basis that one was paid by Len Parker
Associates and the other by Fluidics.
“Once each passed the perimeter and
arrived at work, whoever may have sent them to their place
of employment becomes immaterial, since each was equally
subordinate to the on-the-job control of the general
contractor,” the appeals court ruled.
The case is O’Donnell v. R.M. Shoemaker & Co.