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MI Supreme Court maintains legal path for injured workers

Date Posted: May 2 2008

LANSING - A recently settled personal injury case for an injured electrician showed, if nothing else, that the Michigan Supreme Court moves in mysterious ways.

The majority of justices on the state High Court, which is a 5-2 bloc of conservative vs. liberal justices, has rarely missed an opportunity to limit the ability of aggrieved workers to win damages from companies. But this time, a 7-0 ruling by the Supreme Court opened the door to a settlement for an injured electrician, and (soft of) maintains a legal path for how construction personal injury cases can be litigated in Michigan.

According to Southfield attorney Marshall Lasser, who litigated the case for the electrician, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that a company acting as a construction project manager "has a duty to fix a safety hazard in a common work area which poses a high degree of risk to workers…."

Curiously, however, the Supremes also dismissed from legal liability the subcontractors that were responsible for the actual placement of the pipes on the floor. The High Court ruled the subcontractors "owed no duty" to the electrician to move their pipes from the walkway floor - "even though their contracts required them to obey OSHA," Lasser said.

He added: "Given the history of this Supreme Court, it's an odd ruling." The legal lesson to be taken away from the case, he said, is that injured workers continue to have a legal target: general contractors/construction managers. Another legal observer at the same time said the ruling "raises the bar" for legal action against subcontractors.

The injury took place in August 1999. The electrician rounded a corner and stepped on a set of pipes that were on a floor in a common work area of the IMAX theatre under construction in Dearborn. The electrician fell and had to undergo surgery on his wrist and shoulder. Bones were removed from his wrist, which was fused so that it couldn't move up or down or side to side. He hasn't worked in the trade since.

In 2000 Lasser filed a lawsuit on behalf of his client against the construction manager and three piping subcontractors. Lasser claimed that the construction manager/general contractor has a duty to fix safety hazards which "posed a high risk to a significant number of workers in a common work area," even if they are "open and obvious" - such as pipes on the floor of a walkway.

He also claimed the subcontractors owed a duty under their contracts - which obligated them to obey safety regulations - to move their pipes out of the passageway, as required by OSHA.

In 2001, the trial court dismissed the case, ruling that because the pipes on the floor were "open and obvious," neither the construction manager nor the subs owed the injured electrician any duty to move the pipes from the walkway floor. The Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal. But the state's ultra-conservative high court - whose rulings have made it extremely difficult for workers to win judgments against companies - looked at the case on appeal in 2005 and assigned responsibility to the general contractor/construction manager.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to the Wayne County Circuit Court for trial against the general contractor. From there, the case bounced around the trial court and the appeals court, and during that time one of the subcontractor's insurance companies cut off the electrician from workers' compensation benefits, claiming he had no work-related disability.

Both the negligence case and a lawsuit to re-institute the disability award were slated for trial in April. At the last minute, however, the insurance companies for the general contractor and the subs agreed to pay the victim's settlement demands, "which ran into "many hundreds of thousands of dollars," Lasser said.

Case closed.