Usa Waste of Maryland, Inc. v. Love, No. 05-CV-1183.

• Decision Date: 21 August 2008
• Docket Number: No. 05-CV-1183.
• Citation: 954 A.2d 1027
• Parties: USA WASTE OF MARYLAND, INC., Appellant, v. Isaac Anthony LOVE, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

954 A.2d 1027

USA WASTE OF MARYLAND, INC., Appellant, v. Isaac Anthony LOVE, Appellee.

No. 05-CV-1183.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued November 7, 2006.

Decided August 21, 2008.

William J. Carter, with whom Dennis J. Quinn, Washington, Tamara B. Goorevitz, and David A. Skomba were on the brief, for appellant.

Marc I. Fiedler, with whom Roger C. Johnson was on the brief, for appellee.

Before GLICKMAN and BLACKBURNE-RIGSBY, Associate Judges, and STEADMAN, Senior Judge.

GLICKMAN, Associate Judge:

The dispositive issue in this appeal is whether an employee of a temporary labor services company is also an employee, for purposes of workers' compensation law, of the business entity to which he is assigned to work. Appellee Isaac Anthony Love was detailed by Ready Staffing, Inc. ("Ready Staffing") to work as a truck driver's assistant for appellant USA Waste of Maryland, Inc. ("USA Waste"), a Maryland trash collection company. Love was seriously injured on the job and brought a personal injury action against USA Waste in Superior Court. In pretrial motions and at trial, USA Waste contended that, as one of Love's employers, it was immune from tort liability to him. The trial judge rejected this defense, ultimately ruling as a legal matter that USA Waste was not Love's employer under District of Columbia law. At trial, the jury returned a verdict in Love's favor and awarded him damages of $1,335,938.56. USA Waste has appealed.

We hold that Love was USA Waste's employee within the meaning of workers' compensation law.¹ USA Waste therefore is immune from tort liability to Love, and is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

I.

There is no dispute as to the material facts. At the time of his accident, Isaac Love had been employed for approximately ten years by Ready Staffing, a temporary labor supply company located in the District of Columbia. To obtain work, Love reported to Ready Staffing's employee lounge early each morning and waited to be assigned a job that day with one of Ready Staffing's clients. Ready Staffing decided where to assign him and transported him by van to and from the job site. As a general unskilled laborer, Love was available to perform construction and trash-hauling jobs throughout the metropolitan area.

USA Waste was one of Ready Staffing's trash-hauling clients to which Love often was detailed to work. At trial, Love estimated he had worked for USA Waste in Maryland on seventy-five to one hundred occasions prior to the date of his accident. He acknowledged that he "chose" to work for USA Waste of his "own free will."² While on such assignments, Love was supervised solely by USA Waste. The agreement between the two companies, which was set forth on the back of Love's time sheet, stated explicitly that "Ready Staffing does not provide supervision of Ready Staffing employees while on Customer's premises or job-site." USA Waste also decided how many hours Love worked. Love was subject to USA Waste's rules and discipline, and the company was free to refuse his services.

The companies' agreement specified that Ready Staffing assigned Love to USA Waste "to render temporary service" only. USA Waste agreed that it would not "hire" him or otherwise "interfere with" his employment relationship with Ready Staffing. USA Waste also agreed not to pay Love directly.³ Instead, USA Waste paid Ready Staffing a fixed hourly rate for Love's services, and Ready Staffing in turn paid Love. Ready Staffing compensated him, at minimum wage, only for the hours he worked for USA Waste (or another customer), and not for the hours he spent waiting at Ready Staffing or in transit between Ready Staffing and the job. The difference between what USA Waste paid Ready Staffing and what Ready Staffing paid Love covered payroll taxes, workers' compensation insurance coverage and other benefits, overhead costs, and Ready Staffing's profit.⁴ While Love was covered by Ready Staffing's workers' compensation insurance policy, he was covered by USA Waste's policy as well, even though USA Waste's agreement with Ready Staffing did not require it to furnish such coverage.

In accordance with the foregoing arrangements, Ready Staffing assigned Love to work for USA Waste on January 11, 2002. Love accepted the assignment. The Ready Staffing van transported him and several other temporary employees to USA Waste's facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where a USA Waste supervisor assigned Love to work as a driver's helper on a residential trash collection route in Bethesda, Maryland. The driver of the garbage truck, a USA Waste employee named Adisa Harkless, was responsible for Love's performance and safety on the route.

Harkless and Love had been collecting trash for approximately an hour when the accident happened. According to Love's account, he was attempting to climb aboard the truck when Harkless unexpectedly released the emergency brake and stepped on the accelerator. The truck lurched forward. Love lost his footing and fell to the pavement. Before he could recover, the truck's left front tire rolled over his right leg. The severely damaged limb could not be saved and was amputated above the knee.

Pursuant to the District of Columbia Workers' Compensation Act, Love applied for and received benefits covering lost wages, medical expenses and vocational rehabilitation from Ready Staffing and its insurer. He did not seek any such benefits from USA Waste. Instead, he sued USA Waste for negligence in Superior Court.

II.

As a threshold matter, the parties disagree over whether USA Waste's claimed immunity from tort liability is governed by the workers' compensation law of Maryland or the District of Columbia. The parties focus their disagreement on the choice of law principles we have adopted in the District of Columbia for tort cases in general. In such cases, we have held, the choice of law turns on which jurisdiction has "the most significant relationship to the dispute,"⁵ and "which jurisdiction's policy would be more advanced" by applying its law.⁶ The trial court agreed with Love that those metrics call for application of D.C. law to the instant dispute,⁷ while USA Waste argues for the application of Maryland law.⁸

However, a special choice-of-law rule applies in this jurisdiction to claims of immunity under workers' compensation laws.⁹ The essence of the rule is set forth in the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws as follows:

§ 184 Abolition of Right of Action for Tort or Wrongful Death Recovery for tort or wrongful death will not be permitted in any state if the defendant is declared immune from such liability by the workmen's compensation statute of a state under which the defendant is required to provide insurance against the particular risk and under which

(a) the plaintiff has obtained an award for the injury, or

(b) the plaintiff could obtain an award for the injury, if this is the state (1) where the injury occurred, or (2) where employment is principally located, or (3) where the employer supervised the employee's activities from a place of business in the state, or (4) whose local law governs the contract of employment under the rules of §§ 187-188 and 196.[¹⁰]

The rationale of this choice-of-law rule is to foster the fundamental policies of workers' compensation laws, to which all states and the District of Columbia subscribe:

It is thought unfair that a person who is required to provide insurance against a risk under the workmen's compensation statute of one state which gives him immunity from liability for tort or wrongful death should not enjoy that immunity in a suit brought in other states. Also to deny a person the immunity granted him by a workmen's compensation statute of a given state would frustrate the efforts of that state to restrict the cost of industrial accidents and to afford a fair basis for predicting what these costs will be. All states are sympathetic with the policies underlying workmen's compensation, and all states grant certain persons immunity from liability for tort or wrongful death, although the provisions of the various statutes do differ in matters of detail. For all of these reasons, a state will not hold a person liable for tort or wrongful death under the circumstances stated in the present rule.[¹¹] Love was injured in Maryland. Consequently, under Section 184(b)(1), if Maryland's workers' compensation law would bar his negligence action against USA Waste, we must enforce that bar even if District of Columbia law would permit the action to proceed. That said, we conclude there is no conflict of laws that must be resolved by resort to a choice of law rule. A conflict of laws does not exist when the laws of the different jurisdictions are identical or would produce the identical result on the facts presented.¹² As we shall now discuss, that is the case here. Under the so-called "lent employee" doctrine, which is a feature of both Maryland and District of Columbia workers' compensation law, an employer such as USA Waste is immune from tort liability to a temporary worker such as Love.

III.

The "philosophy" of workers' compensation law "has commonly been described as a quid pro quo on both sides: in return for the purchase of insurance against job-related injuries, the employer receives tort immunity; in return for giving up the right to sue the employer, the employee receives swift and sure benefits."¹³ Thus, the workers' compensation statutes of Maryland and the District of Columbia afford immunity to employers from tort actions by their employees for personal injuries arising out of and in the course of their employment.¹⁴ Consequently, we consider whether USA Waste was Love's employer at the time of the accident under the substantive principles of each jurisdiction's workers' compensation law.¹⁵ If so, then USA Waste (which complied with any statutory obligation it had to secure coverage as a condition of immunity) is immune from tort liability to...