Opinion ID: 6357543
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Maine Workers' Compensation Act's Definition of Employer

Text: [¶ 9] Pursuant to 39-A M.R.S. § 102(12), [t]he term 'employer' includes: Private employers; The State; Counties; Cities; Towns; Water districts and all other quasi-public corporations of a similar nature; Municipal school committees; and Design professionals. Supplementing that illustrative definition is the term's plain meaning: one who controls and directs a worker under an express or implied contract of hire and who pays the worker's salary or wages. Employer , Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014). The plain language of the Act's definition of employer, taken alone, would lead to a conclusion that an entity cannot be an employer if it does not have even a single employee. [¶ 10] The same conclusion is apparent when considering Clark's perspective of whether an employment relationship existed between himself and Benton, LLC. The Act, in relevant part, broadly defines an employee as every person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written. 39-A M.R.S. § 102(11)(A) (2017). There is no dispute that Clark was not in the service of Benton, LLC, except by Hammond Lumber Company's express directive, nor did he have any contract of hire with Benton, LLC. Id. Again, a plain reading of one of the Act's definitions leads to a conclusion that Clark was not an employee of Benton, LLC. [¶ 11] We have held, however, that in certain cases the immunity afforded by section 104 might extend to a defendant landowner that is affiliated with an employer. Our inquiry in those cases has centered upon whether the landowner's duties are totally separate from [the employer entity's] duties as employer. Peavey v. Taylor , 637 A.2d 449 , 451 (Me. 1994) (quotation marks omitted); see LaBelle v. Crepeau , 593 A.2d 653 , 655 (Me. 1991). In those cases, our focus was on the nature of the duties that the employer and its affiliates owed to the plaintiff, not whether the affiliated entity that sought immunity had any employees. See Peavey , 637 A.2d at 451 . For instance, in LaBelle the scope of the immunity of a landlord, who was also an officer of the employer, turned upon the separate nature of his duty to the plaintiff as a landlord, not upon whether the landlord's business had any employees. 593 A.2d at 654-55 . [¶ 12] As noted by the trial court and Benton, LLC, we have not had occasion to decide this precise issue concerning the scope of the Act's immunity with regard to employers and related entities such as Benton, LLC. We now hold that a  property-owning entity is not afforded immunity by the Act by the simple facts that one of its officers is also an officer in the entity that employs the injured person, the employer has secured compensation according to the Act for the injured person, and the property-owning entity allows the employer to use its premises for its business purposes. As we will explain, this result is consistent with the dual persona doctrine.