Is a landowner liable for an independent contractor's injuries on the job?

In its unanimous decision in Gonzalez v. Mathis, the California Supreme Court recognized there is a strong presumption under California law that a hirer of an independent contractor delegates to the contractor all responsibility for workplace safety.

This means that a hirer is typically not liable for injuries sustained by an independent contractor or its workers while on the job. Commonly referred to as the Privette doctrine, the presumption originally stemmed from the following rationales:

First, hirers usually have no right to control an independent contractor’s work.

Second, contractors can factor in the cost of safety precautions and insurance coverage in the contract price.

Third, contractors can obtain workers’ compensation to cover any on-the-job injuries.

Finally, contractors are typically hired for their expertise, which enables them to perform the contracted-for work safely and successfully.

There are two limited circumstances in which the presumption is overcome.

First, a hirer may be liable when it retains control over any part of the independent contractor’s work and negligently exercises that retained control in a manner that affirmatively contributes to the worker’s injury.

Second, a landowner who hires an independent contractor may be liable if the landowner knew, or should have known, of a concealed hazard on the property that the contractor did not know of and could not have reasonably discovered, and the landowner failed to warn the contractor of the hazard.

The Supreme Court granted review in this case to decide whether a landowner may also be liable for injuries to an independent contractor or its workers that resulted from a known hazard on the premises where there were no reasonable safety precautions it could have adopted to avoid or minimize the hazard.

The Supreme court concluded that permitting liability under such circumstances, thereby creating a broad third exception to the Privette doctrine, would be fundamentally inconsistent with the doctrine.

When a landowner hires an independent contractor to perform a task on the landowner’s property, the landowner presumptively delegates to the contractor a duty to ensure the safety of its workers. This encompasses a duty to determine whether the work can be performed safely despite a known hazard on the worksite.

As between a landowner and an independent contractor, the law assumes that the independent contractor is typically better positioned to determine whether and how open and obvious safety hazards on the worksite might be addressed in performing the work.

California case law makes clear that, where the hirer has effectively delegated its duties, there is no affirmative obligation on the hirer’s part to independently assess workplace safety.

Thus, unless a landowner retains control over any part of the contractor’s work and negligently exercises that retained control in a manner that affirmatively contributes to the injury will not be liable to an independent contractor or its workers for an injury resulting from a known hazard on the premises.  

Defendant John R. Mathis lived in a one-story house with a flat, sand-and-gravel roof. The roof contained a large skylight covering an indoor pool.

Plaintiff Luis Gonzalez was a professional window washer who first started cleaning Mathis’s skylight in the 1990s as an employee of Beverly Hills Window Cleaning.

In the mid-2000s, Gonzalez started his own professional window washing company. Gonzalez advertised his business as specializing in hard to reach windows and skylights. His marketing materials stated that he trained his employees to take extra care with their own safety when cleaning windows.

In or around 2007, Mathis began regularly hiring Gonzalez’s company to clean the skylight. Gonzalez would climb a ladder affixed to the house to access the roof. Directly to the right of the top of the ladder, a three-foot-high parapet wall runs parallel to the skylight. Mathis constructed the parapet wall for the aesthetic purpose of obscuring air conditioning ducts and pipes from view.

The path between the edge of the roof and the parapet wall is approximately 20 inches wide. Gonzalez would walk between the parapet wall and the edge of the roof and use a long, water-fed pole to clean the skylight. Gonzalez testified that he did not walk on the other side of the parapet wall — i.e., between the parapet wall and the skylight — because air conditioning ducts, pipes, and other permanent fixtures made the space too tight for him to navigate.

In 2012, at the direction of Mathis’s housekeeper, Gonzalez went up on to the roof to tell his employees to use less water while cleaning the skylight because water was leaking into the house. While Gonzalez was walking between the parapet wall and the edge of the roof on his way back to the ladder, he slipped and fell to the ground, sustaining serious injuries.

Gonzalez did not have workers’ compensation insurance.

The trial court granted Mathis’s motion for summary judgment, finding that Mathis owed no duty to Gonzalez pursuant to the Privette doctrine.

The Court of Appeal reversed. It held that a landowner may be liable to an independent contractor or its workers for injuries resulting from known hazards in certain circumstances.  The Court of Appeal held that disputed issues of material fact existed as to whether Gonzalez could have taken reasonable safety precautions to avoid the danger, precluding summary judgment.

Over the nearly three decades since the Supreme Court decided Privette, it has repeatedly reaffirmed the basic rule that a hirer is typically not liable for injuries sustained by an independent contractor or its workers while on the job.

Delegation is the key principle underlying this rule: Because the hirer presumptively delegates to the independent contractor the authority to determine the manner in which the work is to be performed, the contractor also assumes the responsibility to ensure that the worksite is safe, and the work is performed safely.

This rule applies even where the hirer was at least partially to blame due to its negligent hiring or its failure to comply with preexisting statutory or regulatory workplace safety requirements.

It also applies to a solo independent contractor who has no employees and who has declined to obtain workers’ compensation insurance, such that the contractor will receive no coverage for his or her injuries.

There are two situations in which a hirer has failed to effectively delegate all responsibility for workplace safety to the independent contractor.

First, a hirer will be liable where it exercises retained control over any part of the contractor’s work in a manner that affirmatively contributes to the worker’s injuries.

Second, a landowner can be liable if the landowner knew, or should have known, of a latent or concealed preexisting hazardous condition on its property, the contractor did not know and could not have reasonably discovered this hazardous condition, and the landowner failed to warn the contractor about this condition.

Gonzalez contended that Mathis’s roof was hazardous because the skylight could only be cleaned while walking along an unreasonably narrow path between the parapet wall and the roof’s exposed edge and, due to Mathis’s years-long failure to maintain the roof, this path was slippery and covered in loose sand, gravel, and rocks.

Gonzalez additionally argued that he was not hired to and lacked the expertise necessary to repair the roof or change the permanent fixtures on the roof such that he and his workers could clean the skylight safely.

Thus, Gonzalez concluded, Mathis’s duty to maintain the roof in a reasonably safe condition was never delegated to him.

But while Mathis may not have delegated any duty to repair the roof or make other structural changes to it, Mathis did delegate to Gonzalez a duty to provide a safe workplace to his workers and to perform the work for which he was retained in a safe manner.

This encompassed a duty on Gonzalez’s part to assess whether he and his workers could clean the skylight safely despite the existence of the known hazardous conditions on the roof.

It was undisputed that Gonzalez was aware of the roof’s dangerous conditions. Consequently, Gonzalez had a duty to determine whether he and his workers would be able to clean the skylight safely despite the known dangerous conditions.

In sum, pursuant to Privette, Mathis delegated all responsibility for workplace safety to Gonzalez. This delegation included a responsibility on Gonzalez’s part to ensure that he and his workers would be able to clean the skylight safely despite the known dangerous conditions on the roof which increased the risk of falling.

Mathis was not liable under the well- established precedent because he did not exercise any retained control over any part of Gonzalez’s work in a manner that affirmatively contributed to Gonzalez’s injury.

Under Privette, a landowner presumptively delegates to an independent contractor all responsibility for workplace safety, including the responsibility to ensure that the work can be performed safely despite a known hazard on the worksite.

For this reason, a landowner will generally owe no duty to an independent contractor or its workers to remedy or adopt other measures to protect them against known hazards on the premises.

Though a landowner may, nevertheless, be liable for a known hazard on the premises if it exercises its retained control over any part of the independent contractor’s work in a manner that affirmatively contributes to the injury, Gonzalez failed to present any evidence tending to show that such circumstances existed in this case.

LESSONS:

1.         The basic rule that a hirer is typically not liable for injuries sustained by an independent contractor or its workers while on the job.

2.         Because the hirer presumptively delegates to the independent contractor the authority to determine the manner in which the work is to be performed, the contractor also assumes the responsibility to ensure that the worksite is safe, and the work is performed safely.

3.         A hirer will be liable where it exercises retained control over any part of the contractor’s work in a manner that affirmatively contributes to the worker’s injuries.

4.         A landowner can be liable if the landowner knew, or should have known, of a latent or concealed preexisting hazardous condition on its property, the contractor did not know and could not have reasonably discovered this hazardous condition, and the landowner failed to warn the contractor about this condition.