Opinion ID: 3008418
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Introduction — Whether Entergy Can Qualify As a “General Contractor”

Text: Today’s issue is simply stated but sharply disputed: Can a premises owner qualify as a “general contractor” under the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act? Amid the spirited debate, two preliminary matters are unchallenged: (1) premises owners who provide workers’ compensation insurance coverage to their own employees are statutorily immune from tort suits over work-related injuries; and (2) general contractors who cover their subcontractors’ employees are also immune. Today’s case presents a hybrid — whether a premises owner can serve as its own general contractor and assert the same exclusive-remedy defense as a contract employer that it asserts as a direct employer. Consider: Two employees working side by side at a company-owned workplace, performing the same work when the same accident inflicts the same injuries. One worker is the company’s direct employee, the other its contract employee, both having voluntarily elected coverage under the same written, owner-provided workers’ compensation policy. If the owner meets the Legislature’s elastic definition of “general contractor” — written solely in terms of what contractors do , not what they own — then its contract employees are bound by the same agreed-to policy that binds its direct employees. Ownership nowhere proscribes what the Act prescribes. Two things should drive our analysis — the Legislature’s language, which is open-ended, and this Court’s role, which is not. We must respect policy-laden statutes as written and give wide leeway to the innumerable trade-offs reflected therein. The Act’s definition of “general contractor” is sweeping (“a person who undertakes to procure the performance of work”) and carves out only one narrow exclusion (“a motor carrier that provides a transportation service through the use of an owner operator”). The wording is inclusive in general but exclusive in particular. The pre-1989 Act used a similarly broad definition (with no exclusion) but a companion definition suggested a premises owner could not serve as its own general contractor. Significantly, the Legislature deleted that explicit dual-hat reference in 1989 as part of a substantive overhaul. Today’s Act does not deny the exclusive-remedy defense if the person who procures the work and provides the coverage — the two factors that define “statutory employer” — also owns the jobsite. I agree with the Court. By “ undertak [ ing ] to procure the performance of work,” Entergy meets the Legislature’s brief-but-broad definition. This, coupled with Entergy’s provision of workers’ comp coverage, confers statutory-employer status.