Opinion ID: 1687516
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: SCSI's Status as a Service Company

Text: The Alabama Workers' Compensation Act provides an exclusive remedy for the employee injured in a workplace accident: Except as provided in this chapter, no employee of any employer subject to this chapter ... shall have a right to any other method, form, or amount of compensation or damages for an injury or death occasioned by an accident or occupational disease proximately resulting from and while engaged in the actual performance of the duties of his or her employment and from a cause originating in such employment or determination thereof. Ala.Code 1975, § 25-5-52. Section 25-5-53 similarly provides, in pertinent part: Except as provided in this chapter, no employer shall be held civilly liable for personal injury to or death of the employer's employee, for purposes of this chapter, whose injury to or death is due to an accident or to an occupational disease while engaged in the service or business of the employer, the cause of which accident or occupational disease originates in the employment. Thus, whether a person or entity is an employer within the meaning of the Act determines whether the employee can maintain a civil lawsuit against that person or entity. In this context, whether the person or entity the employee wishes to sue is deemed an employer is of critical significance. Employer is defined at Ala.Code 1975, § 25-5-1(4), which reads, in pertinent part: (4) EMPLOYER. Every person who employs another to perform a service for hire and pays wages directly to the person. The term shall include a service company for a self-insurer or any person, corporation, copartnership, or association, or group thereof, and shall, if the employer is insured, include his or her insurer, the insurer being entitled to the employer's rights, immunities, and remedies under this chapter, as far as applicable. We are called upon initially to address the question whether a service company that does not assist the employer in regard to its workers' compensation benefits plan fits within this definition of employer. Richardson argues that the term service company for a self insurer applies only to those service companies that assist with the administration of the employer's workers' compensation program. We agree. In determining the legislative intent, the polestar of statutory construction, see Sunflower Lumber Co. v. Turner Supply Co., 158 Ala. 191, 48 So. 510 (1909); Ex parte Jordan, 592 So.2d 579, 581 (Ala.1992), we are guided by Ala.Code 1975, § 25-5-53, through which the legislature has expressly stated which nonemployer entities enjoy statutory immunity. That section provides, in pertinent part, that immunity from civil liability for all causes of action except those based on willful conduct shall ... extend to the workers' compensation insurance carrier of the employer [or] to a ... corporation responsible for the servicing and payment of workers' compensation claims for the employer. Note that under § 25-5-53 the grant of immunity to a corporate service company is expressly tied to the servicing and administering of a workers' compensation program. Reading this section in pari materia with § 25-5-1(4), which defines employer, we think it clear that the reference in § 25-5-1(4) to a service company for a self-insurer  was intended to apply to companies that administer the workers' compensation plan of a self-insured employer. Accordingly, as to the first certified question[w]hether a service company that does not provide assistance related to workers' compensation benefits qualifies as a `service company for a self-insurer' and thus, is an `employer' we answer in the negative. As to the second certified question whether the services provided by SCSI to Southern Nuclear under a January 1995 agreement between them renders SCSI a service company employer under § 25-5-1(4)we observe that, given our answer to the first question, we must answer this second question in the negative. That agreement provides for SCSI to act as a service company of Southern Nuclear, but SCSI does not assert that it contracted by that agreement to service or administer Southern Nuclear's workers' compensation program, and it is undisputed that SCSI did not service or administer that program for Southern Nuclear.