Garcia v. Pittsylvania County Service Authority

• Decision Date: 26 April 1988
• Docket Number: 87-2092,Nos. 87-2091,s. 87-2091
• Citation: 845 F.2d 465
• Parties: Jesus GARCIA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY SERVICE AUTHORITY; William C. Overman Associates, Defendants-Appellees. Elfido MORALES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY SERVICE AUTHORITY; William C. Overman Associates, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 465

845 F.2d 465

Jesus GARCIA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY SERVICE AUTHORITY; William C. Overman

Associates, Defendants-Appellees.

Elfido MORALES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY SERVICE AUTHORITY; William C. Overman

Associates, Defendants-Appellees.

Nos. 87-2091, 87-2092.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued Jan. 4, 1988.

Decided April 26, 1988.

Charles R. Holton (William E. Freeman, Jo Ann Ragazzo Woods, Moore & Van Allen, Durham, N.C., on brief), for plaintiff-appellant.

Philip Browder Morris (Michelle P. Wiltshire, Browder, Russell, Morris & Butcher, Richmond, Va., on brief), John L. Walker, Jr. (Steven D. Hedges, Woods, Rogers & Hazelgrove, Roanoke, Va., H. Victor Millner, Jr., Vansant, Millner & Vines, Chatham, Va., on brief), for defendants-appellees.

Before WIDENER and HALL, Circuit Judges, and BULLOCK, District Judge, Middle District of North Carolina, sitting by designation.

WIDENER, Circuit Judge:

Jesus Garcia and Elfido Morales, plaintiffs, appeal the denial of their claims for damages against Pittsylvania County Service Authority and William C. Overman Associates. For the reasons stated below, we affirm.

Plaintiffs were seriously injured on July 11, 1985 in an explosion while engaged in the construction of a sewer interceptor line. The line was owned by and under construction at the direction of the Authority, which, with financing from the Environmental Protection Agency and Farmers Home Administration, was constructing a portion of a major sanitary sewer system in the county, this section being known as the Sandy River Interceptor. Overman Associates, P.C., was engaged by the Authority by contract to perform engineering services for the entire project.

The Authority awarded the contract for the Sandy River section of the project designated 83-5-S to Roanoke Construction Company. Garcia and Morales were employees of Roanoke. The work performed included digging trenches, laying pipe and blasting rock. The plaintiffs were injured when a jackhammer being operated by Morales came into contact with an unexploded dynamite charge left from earlier blasting.

Roanoke is a North Carolina corporation with its principal place of business in that State. Plaintiffs are North Carolina residents and were employed by Roanoke in that State, they say pursuant to oral contracts of employment. They have received workers' compensation benefits pursuant to the North Carolina Workers' Compensation Act, N.C.Gen.Stat. Sec. 97-1, et seq, on account of Roanoke's workers' compensation coverage. They subsequently filed these actions in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia against the Authority and Overman, on June 18, 1986, seeking damages on account of their injuries. Defendants moved to dismiss the complaints on the grounds, inter alia, that plaintiffs' actions were barred by the exclusive remedy provision of the Virginia Workers' Compensation Act, Va. Code Sec. 65.1, et seq. The district court dismissed the complaints for the reason that the claims were so barred, and these appeals followed.

Prior to Carroll v. Lanza, 349 U.S. 408, 75 S.Ct. 804, 99 L.Ed. 1183 (1955), it had been held, in Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. Goode Const. Co., 97 F.Supp. 316 (E.D.Va.1951), that Solomon v. Call, 159 Va. 625, 166 S.E. 467 (1932), held that Virginia looked to the State of the injured workman's residence, when the accident occurred within Virginia, and the contract of employment was in the State of residence of the workman. In both of these cases, the Virginia workers' compensation law was held not to apply to employees, injured in Virginia, who were residents of other States, working for out of state employers, in Virginia, thus allowing the injured employee to pursue his action for negligence against his employer in Liberty Mutual and against a stranger in Solomon.

The Supreme Court, however, in Carroll, held that, in workers' compensation cases involving differing state compensation statutes, the State where the injury occurred was not required to give full faith and credit to the workers' compensation act of the State of employment. The Court relied on Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Commission, 306 U.S. 493, 59 S.Ct. 629, 83 L.Ed. 940 (1939), which had held that the law of the forum State might prevail if the injury occurred in the forum, and stated that one State might not preclude another "from prescribing for itself the legal consequences of acts within it." 306 U.S. at 505, 59 S.Ct. at 634.

Under Virginia law, after Carroll, this court affirmed a summary judgment granted by the district court, on essential facts indistinguishable from those present here, in favor of a Virginia defendant in Home Indemnity Company of New York v. Poladian, 270 F.2d 156 (4th Cir.1959). The employee in Home Indemnity was a resident of the District of Columbia working for a D.C. employer (a subcontractor) on a construction project in Virginia. After being injured on the job, the employee elected to recover compensation in the District of Columbia, and Home Indemnity as subrogee brought suit on the employee's claim against the general contractor. This court stated that "in determining whether an actionable tort has been committed in Virginia we look to its laws, for it is within Virginia's competence to take away the common law right of action if it deems more just to award fixed compensation irrespective of negligence." 270 F.2d at 158. We held that the general contractor, as a statutory employer who had complied with the Virginia Act, was protected from the action in negligence by the Act even though no such bar existed under District of Columbia law.

In the case of McCann v. Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, 177 F.Supp. 909 (E.D.Va.1959), the district court followed Carroll and Home Indemnity and held that the law of the State of the accident controls the remedy sought in that particular forum. 177 F.Supp. at 913. The court declined to follow Liberty Mutual 's construction of Solomon. Thus, a New Jersey resident who was an employee of a New Jersey company,...