Bence v. Pacific Power and Light Co., 5444

• Decision Date: 16 July 1981
• Docket Number: No. 5444,5444
• Citation: 631 P.2d 13
• Parties: Daniel J. BENCE, Appellant (Plaintiff), v. PACIFIC POWER AND LIGHT COMPANY, a Maine Corporation, et al., Appellees (Defendants).
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Page 13

631 P.2d 13

Daniel J. BENCE, Appellant (Plaintiff), v. PACIFIC POWER AND LIGHT COMPANY, a Maine Corporation, et al., Appellees (Defendants).

No. 5444.

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

July 16, 1981.

Gary L. Shockey of Spence, Moriarity & Schuster, Jackson, signed the brief and appeared in oral argument on behalf of appellant.

Richard E. Day and Patrick J. Murphy of Williams, Porter, Day & Neville, Casper, signed the brief on behalf of appellees; and Day appeared in oral argument.

Before ROSE, C. J., and RAPER, THOMAS, ROONEY, and BROWN, JJ.

BROWN, Justice.

The sole issue presented by this appeal is whether appellees are entitled to immunity from suit by virtue of the Wyoming Worker's Compensation Act. After examining the pertinent Wyoming laws, we have concluded that appellees are not immune from suit and, therefore, we reverse and remand the case for further proceedings.

Daniel Bence, appellant, brought this personal injury action against Pacific Power and Light Company and Idaho Power Company, appellees, after he was seriously injured in 1974 when he fell from a scaffolding while he was attempting to weld tubes on the waterwall of a boiler. At the time of the occurrence, Bence was employed by Bechtel Power Corporation as a welder-pipefitter and he was working at the Jim Bridger Power Plant located near Rock Springs, Wyoming. Bechtel Power Corporation had contracted with appellees to do work in connection with the designing, engineering and construction of the power plant. Appellees are the owners of the power plant.

Bence did receive worker's compensation after he was injured. However, while both contracts between appellees and Bechtel Power Corporation provided that Bechtel was entitled to receive "recoverable cost" which included "net costs of premiums for workmen's compensation," the record does not contain any evidence that appellees contributed to the worker's compensation fund. In any event according to their agreement, any payment by appellees would have been made indirectly by way of reimbursement to Bechtel. ¹

Appellees filed a motion for summary judgment alleging that Bechtel was an independent contractor pursuant to one of the two contracts and, therefore, appellees did not owe a duty to appellant. The trial judge in his tentative opinion letter raised for the first time the question of whether appellees are immune from suit because they are David Bence's statutory employers. The trial judge went on to request additional briefs from the parties on this issue and he also indicated that he would allow appellees to amend their answer in order to allege the affirmative defense that worker's compensation is appellant's sole remedy.

After the trial judge received the additional briefs and appellees amended their answer, he granted summary judgment in favor of Pacific Power and Light Company and Idaho Power Company finding:

"* * * (T)hat said defendants were the 'statutory employers' of the plaintiff, that the plaintiff obtained workmen's compensation benefits through his employer, the Bechtel Corporation, and that workmen's compensation is the sole and exclusive remedy of the plaintiff against the said defendants."

Appellant has appealed from that order.

The question of whether Pacific Power and Light Company and Idaho Power Company are employers within the meaning of the worker's compensation law is one of law. If an owner of a project is an employer, the employee's sole remedy is worker's compensation and the employee may not subject the owner to a common-law tort action. On the other hand, if the owner is a third party he is subject to a common-law tort action for the injuries sustained by the contractor's employee. In order to answer this question, we must look to the law of Wyoming.

A landowner at common law was not considered the employer of a workman hired by the person with whom the owner had contracted to develop his property. Here appellees contend that § 27-60(D), W.S.1957, of the Wyoming Worker's Compensation Act made owners statutory employers of the workmen; therefore, appellees are immune from the present action.

This court has held that immunity provisions in the Wyoming Worker's Compensation Act, will be narrowly construed. Markle v. Williamson, Wyo., 518 P.2d 621, 624 (1974); and Barnette v. Doyle, Wyo., 622 P.2d 1349 (1981). As this court recently stated in Barnette v. Doyle, supra, p. 1352:

"Worker's compensation laws were enacted during the later (sic) part of the nineteenth century in order to provide social insurance for victims of industrial accidents, and this compensation is not based upon fault or the breach of a duty owed by the employer to the injured employee. These laws were not enacted to abrogate existing common-law remedies that protected injured workers. * * * "

Because the Act was not intended to abrogate common-law remedies, this court has held that amending legislation must contain clear and precise language before common-law rights can be taken away. Markle v. Williamson, supra.

It is difficult to find in § 27-60(D), supra, any expression of legislative intent to destroy an injured worker's right to bring common-law negligence action against the owner of the premises. Nor do we find such intent in any of the other pertinent Wyoming laws.

As originally enacted, Art. 10, § 4, of the Wyoming Constitution provides that "(n)o law shall be enacted limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death of any person." This section of the constitution was amended in 1914, so that the Wyoming Worker's Compensation Act, §§ 27-12-101 to 27-12-805, W.S.1977, could be enacted. The constitutional amendment provides:

" * * * The right of each employee to compensation from such fund (a compensation fund out of which compensation benefits are paid) shall be in lieu of and shall take the place of any and all rights of action against any employer contributing as required by law to such fund in favor of any person or persons by reason of any such injuries or death." (Emphasis added.)

The sections of the Wyoming Worker's Compensation Act that were in effect at the time of the occurrence and that are pertinent to this appeal are as follows:

" * * * The right of each employee to compensation from such funds (a compensation fund) shall be in lieu of and shall take the place of any and all rights of action against any employer contributing, as required by law to such fund in favor of any such person or persons by reason of such injury or death. * * * " (Emphasis added.) § 27-50, W.S.1957. ²

"(D) * * * (I)n private work the contractor, prime or general, shall be responsible, primarily and directly to the industrial accident fund for all obligations against the total payroll of the work and for the amounts due it, and the owner of the property affected by the contract shall be surety for such payments." (Emphasis added.) § 27-60, W.S.1957. ³

Appellees contend that since the owner under § 27-60(D) is obligated to contribute to the industrial accident fund if the injured worker's employer fails to make the required payment, the owner must be deemed the statutory employer of the worker. In support of this argument, appellees point to Professor Larson's treatise on Workmen's Compensation Law, Vol. 2A, § 72.31, p. 14-47 (1976), in which he states:

"Forty-three states now have 'statutory-employer or contractor-under' statutes i. e., statutes which provide that the general contractor shall be liable for compensation to the employee of a subcontractor under him, usually when the subcontractor is uninsured but sometimes without reference to the insured status of the subcontractor, doing work which is part of the business, trade or occupation of the principal contractor. Since the general contractor is thereby, in effect, made the employer for the purposes of the compensation statute, it is obvious that he should enjoy the regular immunity of an employer from third-party suit when the facts are such that he could be made liable for compensation and the great majority of cases have so held."

When Professor Larson says "Forty-three states now have 'statutory-employer or contract-under' statutes," he has apparently included Wyoming because Wyoming is not listed as an exception in footnote 46, page 14-47. However, we do not believe that Larson has correctly classified Wyoming as a state that has statutory-employer or contract-under statutes, under § 27-60(D), W.S.1957.

Larson does not cite cases from states that provide that an owner is a "surety" nor does he refer to cases from states that have constitutional and statutory provisions granting immunity to "any employer contributing, as required by law to such fund." It appears, therefore, that the cases cited by Larson in support for granting immunity to statutory-employers are of no value because Wyoming's constitutional and statutory language is different from that of other states.

In addition Professor Larson goes on to note:

" * * * It is imperative to observe the exact statutory language used to describe the statutory employer, since it varies significantly from one jurisdiction to another. * * *." 2A Larson, Workmen's Compensation Law, supra, p. 14-57, n. 53.

As appellees' counsel states in his brief to this court "(T)here are as many different types of statutory employers as there are states." Furthermore, appellees have not cited any constitutional or statutory provisions in other states that are similar enough to Wyoming's worker's compensation law to be persuasive. Our own research has revealed that in a substantial number of states that have ruled that a principal contractor is a statutory employer, the applicable worker's compensation law specifically requires immunity.

For example, in Honaker v. W. C. & A. N. Miller Development Company, 285 Md. 216, 401 A.2d 1013 (1979), an injured employee of a roofing subcontractor brought a common-law tort action against the principal contractor who...