Contracted companies not considered employers in negligence suit

A driver who was injured by delivering barite to a well site provided sufficient evidence for a court to conclude that he was not the statutory employee of the well’s owners and operators.

In Dobransky v. EQT Production Co., the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a 2-1 decision on Tuesday vacated a trial court’s decision to dismiss the worker’s negligence claims against the owner of the well site and the company that owned and maintained the barite storage tanks. 

Eric Dobransky filed a complaint against EQT Production Co. and Halliburton Energy Services Inc. alleging negligence for injuries he sustained to his exposure to barite in June 2012 while delivering a truckload of the heavy mineral to a well site. Mr. Dobransky alleged that he was exposed to barite when a cap of a storage tank blew off, releasing the mineral into his face, and argued that the defendants’ failure to operate the well site in a safe manner led to the incident.

The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment arguing that they employed Mr. Dobransky and that they were therefore immune under the exclusive remedy of the Pennsylvania Workers Compensation Act. A trial court granted the motion for summary judgment and Mr. Dobransky appealed, asking the court if a person who drives a truck to deliver a single raw material should be considered a statutory employee for purposes of the Act.

The court held that the trial court erred in holding that Halliburton, which worked for Northwest Logistics for transportation and employed Mr. Dobransky, was his statutory employer and entitled to immunity.

The court noted that Northwest Logistics was not contracted to remove, excavate or drill for minerals, and that the trial court unnecessarily expanded “a compensation scheme that has been repeatedly ridiculed as obsolete in light of subsequent changes to other sections of the Workers Compensation Act.”

The court, therefore, vacated the decision and remanded the case.

In his dissent, Judge Mary Jane Bowes said she believes the court should have affirmed summary judgment to EQT and Halliburton, arguing that the state’s Workers Compensation Act states that a “contractor who subcontracts all or any part of a contract shall be deemed the statutory employer of any subcontractor if the underlying contract is to have work performed of a kind which is a regular or recurrent part of the business, occupation, profession or trade of the contractor.”

Since the uncontested evidence established that the defendants regularly required the delivery and unloading of barite and subcontracted the responsibility, Judge Bowes said she believed that EQT and Halliburton’s statutory status as Mr. Dobransky’s employer in this case was “quite clear under the circumstances.”