Leveraging workers’ compensation to challenge injury cases
When design professionals’ liability and workers’ compensation appear in the same claim, it feels unusual. Injured workers typically receive modest payouts through workers’ compensation. And so, a new trend is emerging where injured workers are also suing design professionals. This scenario raises a unique public policy argument that design professionals may not owe a duty of care to injured workers because of the workers’ compensation benefits the worker has gotten. Understanding the workers’ compensation system can aid defense strategies in these cases. This article will focus on evolving case law in the personal injury vs. design professional space, and provide some tips and tricks on how to use the workers’ compensation system to defeat the plaintiff’s case.
Consider a real-world example that hit our desk: A 38-year-old solar installer fell from a roof on a custom home project. He alleged that the architect should have specified a less slippery roofing material. The installer received a spinal fusion and suffered partial paralysis. He was compensated through workers’ compensation, including ongoing medical care and vocational retraining because he could never work as a solar installer again.
When a claim like this first hits your desk, it can seem silly. Then you consider the fact that his take-home pay was well into the six figures, and he’s never going to do that line of work again. Then, it hits you: This could be a policy-busting claim even with 1% liability (California is joint and several for economic damages). The burning-limits nature of professional liability policies makes it worse. Thus, you can expect a policy-limits demand quickly. And even if the demand is properly rejected with discussions of duty of care, dispositive motions, and causation arguments, claims professionals and their attorneys will still get an earful of arguments from the plaintiff’s attorney that the policy is “open.” This is where an understanding of the current case law and workers’ compensation system can help your client out.
Case Law on Duty of Care
The Beacon case. The central issue in an injured worker vs. design professional claim is if the design professional owed a duty of care to the injured worker. The case that plaintiffs like to cite is Beacon Residential Cmty. Assn. v. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, 59 Cal. 4th 568 (2014). Beacon dealt with an architect who the court found liable to home purchasers because they were a foreseeable class of persons that could suffer harm. In Beacon, the architect was not subordinate to any other designers and did not have a contract with the subsequent homeowners. In employee-injury cases, plaintiffs’ attorneys will argue that, like the later homeowners in Beacon, there is a duty of care owed to the employees because they were foreseeable injured parties.
Beacon created as many problems as it solved. Though the court found a duty of care partially because the architect was not working for anyone else, it did not give much consideration for other design professionals. How does that apply to a specialty designer that the architect hires? What if the project is design-build? What if a homeowner hires the design professionals but, in practice, they report to the architect? Unfortunately, this area of case law is nascent and does not provide much guidance. So, defense attorneys are left trying to distinguish their case from Beacon any way they can. This is where the workers’ compensation system comes into play.
The Piontkowski case and Beacon.
One of the only cases that defense attorneys can look to for guidance is Piontkowski v. Fluor Enterprises, Inc., 2023 WL 4194533 (Cal. Ct. App. June 27, 2023). Piontkowski involved an injured employee suing an engineering company, Fluor. Fluor provided engineering services for upgrades of an oil refinery system. The plaintiff was burned when he was trying to drain an oil processing unit. The plaintiff argued that Fluor, as the designer, owed him a duty of care because it should have kept in mind the safety of the workers who operate the system.
The Piontkowski court, however, disagreed with the plaintiff. Without providing much discussion, the court held that the connection between Fluor’s engineering services and the injury was not as direct or immediate as in Beacon. Indeed, the court made the simple point that construction of homes in Beacon is different than construction at an oil refinery. And so, the court still left defense attorneys reeling about how—and to what extent—they need to distinguish their injured worker case from Beacon.
The Piontkowski case and workers’ compensation. What was notable, though, was how the court discussed the existence of the workers’ compensation system as weighing against there being a duty of care. The court noted that workers’ compensation gives injured workers a complete remedy, and they are thus “fully protected” under the law. The court analyzed the impact of workers’ compensation through a public policy lens and discussed how expanding tort liability would foster litigation by plaintiffs seeking to avoid workers’ compensation bargains. Thus, the court did provide some semblance of a roadmap for future arguments.
How to Use the Case Law
In employee injury cases, motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment should be game planned early on. This requires defense attorneys to distinguish their case from Beacon and set up the public policy workers’ compensation argument.
Distinguishing Beacon. Under Piontkowski, some of the ways to distinguish from Beacon are:
The workers’ compensation argument. A less obvious argument is how workers’ compensation benefits affect “no duty of care.” Essentially, it is a public policy argument that there should not be a duty of care to attenuated design professionals because the plaintiff is taken care of. The hard part is understanding the workers’ compensation system well enough to convince the judge of your public policy argument.
In California, workers’ compensation is its own beast. It has a separate court system, its own judges, and has a different set of rules (e.g., no written discovery). Delving into that system can be intimidating for a defense attorney who usually argues about why a structure is failing or why an architect did not delay a project. So, the defense attorney needs to quickly learn about workers’ compensation and tailor some discovery for it. The defense attorney must understand that:
Then, defense attorneys should tailor their discovery. Questions in a deposition establishing that the plaintiff is receiving workers’ compensation money and is getting medical care will help a motion for summary judgment. It lets the defense attorney argue that, like Piontkowski, there should be no duty of care between an engineering professional and an injured worker plaintiff because the plaintiff is already receiving care. Indeed, the defense can make the public policy plea that expanding tort liability to a distant design professional does nothing to justly compensate the injured plaintiff, it just increases litigation.
In cases involving design professionals and injured workers, defense attorneys should not only differentiate their case from Beacon but also leverage the workers’ compensation benefits. If the injured worker is adequately compensated through workers’ compensation, the argument that a design professional owes no additional duty of care becomes stronger under current California case law.
Clyde & Co. professionals discuss this year's key trends
Sean Dowsing is a partner at the Orange County, California office of Manning & Kass. srd@manningllp.com
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