Court Opinion

ID: 9523682
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:45:40.189324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:07:16.315028
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(dissenting). I dissent because I conclude that the decision in this case contravenes our prior case law and the policies underlying tort law and worker’s compensation law. I *403would affirm the jury’s verdict and the judgment of the circuit court.1
This case presents a narrow issue: whether principal employers who negligently hire an incompetent independent contractor to perform inherently dangerous work are liable for injury to an employee of an independent contractor caused by their negligent hiring. The majority’s answer is no.
Precedent supports the conclusion that the principal employers may be liable in tort for injuries sustained by the employee of an independent contractor performing inherently dangerous work. In Snider v. Northern States Power Co., 81 Wis. 2d 224, 260 N.W.2d 260 (1977), this court recognized that a principal employer is liable in tort to an employee of an independent contractor who sustains injuries because the independent contractor negligently performed inherently dangerous work.2 Snider was a vicarious liability case. If principal employers are vicariously liable to an injured employee for the negligence of the independent contractor, it follows that principal employers are liable to an injured employee for their own *404negligence. The court today overrules Snider by reinterpreting it.3
The court’s conclusion that the principal employers in this case are not liable to the injured employee rests on decisions in other jurisdictions holding that principal employers are not vicariously liable to employees of an independent contractor for the negligence of the independent contractor. Reliance on these vicarious liability decisions is misplaced.
First, the question in this case is whether principal employers should be liable in tort for their own negligence, not whether they should be vicariously liable to injured employees of an independent contractor for the independent contractor’s negligence. Thus the vicarious liability cases exonerating principal employers from liability are inapposite.
Second, the vicarious liability cases rest on the premise that the principal employers used due care in selecting the independent contractor who negligently performed the inherently dangerous work. In Anderson v. Marathon Petroleum Co., 801 F.2d 936, 941-942 (7th Cir. 1986), a vicarious liability case upon which the majority relies (at op. 400-401), the federal court of appeals expressly stated that it was not addressing a case in which the principal employer negligently *405hired the independent contractor. The implications of Anderson and other vicarious liability decisions is that different considerations come into play when principal employers fail to use due care in selecting the independent contractor to do inherently dangerous work.4 In this case, unlike the vicarious liability cases, the principal employers did not use due care.
Third, the courts exonerating principal employers from vicarious liability reason that tort law should not discourage principal employers from employing skilled independent contractors to do inherently dangerous work. See op. at 397-398.5 Courts have concluded that immunizing principal employers from vicarious liability to injured employees of an independent contractor for the negligence of the independent contractor would allow principal employers to decide *406whether to use their own employees or to hire an independent contractor for inherently dangerous work on the merits of the decision without regard to concerns about tort liability to an injured employee.
If the goal is to encourage principal employers to use a skilled independent contractor to do inherently dangerous work, then principal employers should not enjoy tort immunity when, as in this case, they are negligent in hiring the independent contractor to do inherently dangerous work. When the work is inherently dangerous, public safety requires at a minimum that principal employers be held liable for injury caused by their negligence in hiring the independent contractor.
Fourth, in the vicarious liability cases, the courts view principal employers as indirect employers of the injured employee of the independent contractor because the principal employers indirectly pay for worker’s compensation.
This characterization of principal employers as indirect employers is contrary to Wisconsin law. For the past sixty years, this court has said that principal employers may be insurers under the worker’s compensation law but they are not employers of the employees of the independent contractors. See sec. 102.06, Stats. 1985-86; Cermak v. Milwaukee Air Power Pump Co., 192 Wis. 44, 49-50, 211 N.W. 354 (1927); Culbertson v. Kiefhefer Container Co., 197 Wis. 349, 351-52, 222 N.W. 249 (1928). The majority opinion disturbs sixty years of settled law by cryptically declaring that "we do not necessarily continue to embrace all of the principles espoused in Cermak and Culbertson." Op. at 387.
Moreover, the worker’s compensation law expressly provides that it does not affect the right of an *407employee to bring action in tort against a tortfeasor who is not an employer (referred to in the law as a third party). Sec. 102.29(1), Stats., 1985-86. Permitting a cause of action against a third party ensures that the ultimate loss falls on the wrongdoer. When principal employers are negligent, rather than just vicariously liable for the negligence of the independent contractor, they are an ultimate wrongdoer. Accordingly the vicarious liability cases immunizing principal employers under an indirect employer theory are inapplicable.
The majority opinion sends the message that principal employers may negligently hire an incompetent independent contractor to perform inherently dangerous work and escape tort responsibility for injuries their negligent hiring causes to an employee of the independent contractor. This result contravenes our prior case law and the policies underlying tort law and worker’s compensation law. I therefore dissent. I am authorized to state that CHIEF JUSTICE NATHAN S. HEFFERNAN and JUSTICE WILLIAM A. BABLITCH join in this dissent.

he jury found that the wrecking work was inherently dangerous, that the independent contractor was negligent in doing the wrecking (causing the plaintiffs injury), that the principal employers (the defendants) failed to use due care in employing the independent contractor and that the principal employers’ negligence was a cause of the plaintiffs injury.

The majority apparently considers this aspect of the Snider opinion as dicta. Op. at 392. In State v. Kruse, 101 Wis. 2d 387, 392, 305 N.W.2d 85 (1981), quoting Chase v. American Carthage, 176 Wis. 235, 238, 186 N.W. 598 (1922), the court said that when " 'a court of last resort intentionally takes up, discusses, and decides a question germane to, though not necessarily decisive of, the controversy, such decision is not a dictum but is a judicial act of the court which it will thereafter recognize as a binding decision.’”

The majority interprets the parties as "in essence” making a claim that the employer was engaged in abnormally dangerous activity. Op. at 392. The parties' briefs contradict this interpretation of the parties’ position. The parties, like the Snider court, referred only to Restatement sections 416 and 427 which concern inherently dangerous activities. Had the parties intended to address the issue of abnormally dangerous activity, they would have referred to sec. 427A of the Restatement of Torts (Second), which deals with the principal employer’s liability for abnormally dangerous activity. They did not.

Cf. Hixon v. Sherwin-Williams Co, 671 F.2d 1005, 1010 (7th Cir. 1982) (subcontractor is liable to homeowner’s insurer for negligently selecting an independent contractor if the negligence causes the injury); Nelson v. United States, 639 F.2d 469, 476 (9th Cir. 1980) (owner not liable to employee for failing to insure that safety precautions were taken because the owner hired "a contractor particularly skilled in the specific risks which make the project unusually dangerous”).

In King v. Shelby Rural Electric, 502 S.W.2d 659, 663 (Ky. Ct. App. 1974), cited by the majority at Op. at 397-398, the court stated, "The imposition of additional tort liability upon the employer because of the selection of an independent contractor would have a tendency to discourage the practice of selecting skilled independent contractors ..." In Tauscher v. Puget Sound Power and Light Co., 635 P.2d 426, 431 (Wash. 1981), cited by the majority at Op. at 398, the court wrote that to hold a principal employer vicariously liable for the negligence of an independent contractor would "discourage owners from hiring experienced independent contractors, who specialize in hazardous work." Accord Rowley v. City of Baltimore 505 A.2d 494 (Md.1986) (quoting extensively from both King supra and Tauscher supra).