Court Opinion

ID: 9714370
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:36:08.243651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:25.573968
License: Public Domain

Abrams, J.
(concurring).
I agree with the result reached by the court in this case. I believe a few additional comments will more fully place this decision in proper perspective.
In recent years, this court has scrutinized various common law barriers to recovery in negligence cases that focused on the status of the plaintiff or the defendant, and has eliminated several such status distinctions that were anachronistic and unduly confusing and which did not promote tort law objectives of fairly allocating the costs and risks of human injuries. Notwithstanding this salutary trend toward the elimination of invidious status distinctions, cases arise that call for the preserva*172tian or creation of standards of liability that differ according to the nature of the plaintiff or defendant. Because the circumstances of employees injured while performing inherently dangerous work for an independent contractor are dissimilar, in ways that should not be ignored, from those of members of the general public injured by the independent contractor’s failure to take reasonable precautions, I concur in the court’s holding that a general contractor is not vicariously liable to such employees for the independent contractor’s negligence. Ante at 171. Such a rule places all employees working on a job in the same category and members of the public in another. That result fairly allocates the costs and risks of injuries and is not unfair.
In prior decisions, we rejected the notion that certain plaintiffs are less worthy than others for purposes of the standard of care for their personal safety to which a property owner should be held. Thus, in Mounsey v. Ellard, 363 Mass. 693 (1973), we jettisoned the licensee-invitee distinction, noting that “[an] owner’s conduct in maintaining his premises does not depend on whether his visitor is a social or business acquaintance,” and that “ [a] visitor’s safety does not become less worthy of protection by the law because he is a social guest and not a business invitee.” Id. at 706. We also took note that the “ancient and largely discredited common law distinction” between licensees and invitees involved such minute subtleties that its application engendered confusion and inconsistent decisions on similar facts. Id. at 705-706. The distinction, we concluded, was not an equitable one and operated unnecessarily to prevent juries from “determining the fundamental question whether the defendant has acted reasonably in light of all the circumstances in the particular case.” Id. at 707.
For similar reasons, we subsequently discarded our common law rule that a landlord owed a lesser duty of care in the maintenance of common areas to persons visiting a tenant than was owed to others lawfully on the property, finding “no logical basis for distinguishing among persons who enter private property for various legitimate purposes” in measuring the quantum of legal protection available. Lindsey v. Massios, 372 Mass. *17379, 82 (1977). Shortly thereafter, we placed the landlord’s duty to a tenant injured in a common area on a par with the duty owed to visitors, concluding that a tenant’s theoretical access to knowledge about dangerous conditions existing on the premises did not sufficiently distinguish a tenant from a visitor as to justify the dual standards of care imposed until then under the “singular” common law rule of this Commonwealth. King v. G & M Realty Corp., 373 Mass. 658, 660-661 (1977).
In the aftermath of the King decision, a property owner’s duty to licensees, invitees, tenants, and tenants’ guests was homogenized into a general duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent injury to such persons.1 Persons performing work on the owner’s property remained, however, in a disfavored status, the owner’s duty to that class being limited to the disclosure of hidden defects of which the owner was or reasonably should have been aware. We culled the “hidden defect” doctrine from our negligence law in Poirier v. Plymouth, 374 Mass. 206 (1978), holding that the duty of care owed by an owner to an employee of an independent contractor working on the premises would now be the same as that owed to all other lawful visitors. We perceived no reason why such an employee “should ... be made to suffer the negligence of the property owner,” id. at 228, and consequently relegated to oblivion a status distinction that was “contrary to logic and sound modem values,” id. at 223.
More recently, the court faced the question whether foreseeable adult trespassers, who remained second class citizens in the realm of tort law despite our movement away from status distinctions,2 should likewise benefit from the general mie re*174quiring an owner not to be negligent with regard to the safety, of persons on his or her property. A majority of the court was of the opinion that the contrast between societal attitudes toward trespassers and persons lawfully on an owner’s property was of sufficient significance to justify the disparate legal treatment accorded the former category of plaintiffs in suits arising out of injuries incurred on the owner’s property. Schofield v. Merrill, 386 Mass. 244 (1982). The dissenters, whom I joined, declared that status as a bar to recovery by trespassers for negligently inflicted injuries ran counter to the “fundamental concept that a man is liable for injuries caused by his carelessness,” id. at 256 (Liacos, J., dissenting), quoting Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal. 2d 108, 113 (1968), and found overly harsh a rule compelling dismissal, as a matter of law, of negligence claims by all categories of trespassers. Id.
Thus, our decisions for the most part indicate a readiness to eradicate illogical or inequitable status distinctions among tort plaintiffs. The cases demonstrate that the soundness of a given distinction must be analyzed on an individual basis. See Soule v. Massachusetts Elec. Co., 378 Mass. 177, 185-186 (1979); id. at 187 (Hennessey, C.J., concurring). See also Schofield v. Merrill, supra at 258-259 (Liacos, J., dissenting). The origins of the distinction, its conformity with contemporary societal attitudes and public policy, and its consistency with predictable results are all factors to be evaluated.
The rule of law rendering one who employs an independent contractor to perform inherently dangerous work vicariously liable for damages to persons injured by the independent contractor’s negligence imposes, like other vicarious liability doctrines, a duty to pay unrelated to any breach of duty to the plaintiff by the liable party. In the case before us, the evidence was insufficient to establish any negligence by the company *175from which the plaintiff seeks to recover. Unlike the cases summarized above, this case involves no status distinction sanctioning an incremental degree of carelessness by a defendant toward specified categories of victims. The question before us is whether an employee of a negligent independent contractor is distinguishable from a member of the general public in so far as the employer of the independent contractor’s vicarious duty of compensation is concerned.
The imposition of vicarious liability on the employer of an independent contractor who fails to take reasonable precautions in performing inherently dangerous work3 “is grounded in a recognition that the possibility of harm to others is so great when the work activity is inherently dangerous that the law tolerates it only on terms insuring the public against injury.” Jackson v. Petit Jean Elec. Co-op, 270 Ark. 506, 510 (1980). A party who requests and benefits from the performance of inherently dangerous work that may foreseeably injure members of the general public in the absence of special precautions is not permitted to escape financial responsibility for such injuries by a contractual delegation of the responsibility for such precautions to an independent contractor that may be judgment-proof. The additional source of recovery was intended “to protect those who have no direct involvement with the hazardous activity, are only incidentally exposed to its risks and have no direct means of insuring themselves against loss.” Id.
An employee of an independent contractor who engages in inherently hazardous labor differs from a member of the general public in two significant aspects. First, the employee has contracted to perform the work, and generally obtains higher compensation precisely because of such risks. See Poirier v. Plymouth, *176374 Mass. 206, 227 (1978) (“a person who voluntarily enters into a contract of employment to repair an old and visibly decrepit monument may be in a position to demand substantial remuneration for the risk he or she is taking, but cannot demand that the monument be fortified and made safe for climbing”). Indeed, the circumstances in which the plaintiff was injured bear a close resemblance to those that we hypothesized in Poirier would justify insulating the third-party employer from liability even if, as was not demonstrated in this case, the third-party employer had known of the misplacing of the barrels. Id. at 227 n.9. With such a situation in mind, we specifically stated that we did not intend “to preclude ... a proper allocation of risk between the parties nor to make the [third-party employer] an insurer against all loss.” Id. at 227. Where, as in this case, the general contractor was not shown to be negligent, the case is even stronger for cutting off the contractor’s liability and limiting the plaintiff to recovery from the responsible subcontractor.
An equally fundamental distinction between employees injured on the job and passersby or other members of the general public is that employees are insured for their injuries under our workmen’s compensation law. Thus, employees are assured of recovery whereas members of the general public are relegated to the hazards of litigation. The concern that persons injured through the negligence of an independent contractor performing inherently dangerous work might go uncompensated, on which the vicarious liability doctrine is founded, is simply not applicable in the case of an employee.
Under the “common employment” doctrine, the employee of a subcontractor was barred from a negligence action against the general contractor. Clark v. M.W. Leahy Co., 300 Mass. 565, 568-569 (1938). In response to criticisms that the “common employment” doctrine focused exclusively on the availability of financial relief to the victim while ignoring “the moral idea that the ultimate loss from wrongdoing should fall upon the wrongdoer,” 2A A. Larson, Workmen’s Compensation § 71.10 (1983), the Legislature by statutory amendment abolished the common employment rule so as to permit, inter *177alia, the employee of an insured subcontractor to maintain a cause of action against a negligent general contractor. G. L. c. 152, § 15, as amended through St. 1980, c. 488. Where the general contractor has not been negligent, however, neither the objective of ensuring that the victim is compensated nor the objectives of equitable allocation of damages and deterrence of harmful conduct are served by allowing a third-party action by the independent contractor’s employee against the general contractor.
For these reasons, I view the distinction, in the context of the vicarious liability doctrine we here consider, between an employee and a nonemployee, as one based on real, rather than archaic or illogical, differences. Further, a rule that encompassed an independent contractor’s employee in the class of victims entitled to recover from the third-party employer for the independent contractor’s failure to take reasonable precautions would create an indefensible status distinction between employees of an independent contractor and employees working directly for the general contractor. I can think of no justifiable reason for limiting employees in the latter category to workmen’s compensation benefits while permitting those in the former category to obtain a higher measure of recovery for injuries sustained in identical circumstances. Because a person’s status as an employee or nonemployee is the result of conscious choice, and only fortuity distinguishes employees of independent contractors from those working directly for the party for which inherently dangerous work is performed, I agree with the court’s conclusion.

 Following the reasoning of Mounsey and Poirier, we also eliminated status distinctions relating to a landlord’s duty to visitors on the tenant’s premises, Young v. Garwacki, 380 Mass. 162 (1980); and a theatre owner’s duty to patrons, Upham v. Chateau de Ville Dinner Theatre, Inc., 380 Mass. 350 (1980).

 Our “trend toward the imposition of a single duty of reasonable care by owners or occupiers of premises to all persons coming thereon,” Pridgen v. Boston Hous. Auth., 364 Mass. 696, 711-712 (1974), had, by the time of *174the Schofield decision, embraced certain subcategories of trespassers. See Soule v. Massachusetts Elec. Co., 378 Mass. 177, 182 (1979) (landowner or occupier owes duty of reasonable care to foreseeable child trespassers); Pridgen v. Boston Hous. Auth., supra at 713 (owner owes common duty of reasonable care to trespassers helplessly trapped on premises with owner’s knowledge).

 The plaintiff does not rely on § 427A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts (1965), which imposes vicarious liability on an employer who has hired an independent contractor to perform “abnormally” rather than “inherently” dangerous work. Whereas under § 427 an employer is vicariously liable for the negligence of an independent contractor performing inherently dangerous work, under § 427A both the employer and the independent contractor are strictly liable for injuries occasioned by abnormally dangerous work.