Court Opinion

ID: 9707904
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:24:16.954926+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:39.681672
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE JIGANTI, dissenting: Relying on the cases of Marcus v. Green (1973), 13 Ill. App. 3d 699, 300 N.E.2d 512, and Smith v. Metropolitan Sanitary District (1979), 77 Ill. 2d 313, 396 N.E.2d 524, the majority of this court concludes that an employee can sue his employer for both common law negligence and for violations of the Structural Work Act if the employer is the owner of the land. I do not believe that those cases support that conclusion. In Smith the defendant O’Neil was one of two joint venturers on a construction project. Smith was the employee of the joint venture. Pursuant to the joint venture agreement O’Neil leased a truck to the joint venture and was paid by the joint venture for leasing the truck to it. Smith was injured by the truck and filed an action against O’Neil under a products liability theory alleging that the truck was defective. The Illinois Supreme Court held that Smith had a right to bring the action. With respect to the products liability claim the court found that O’Neil’s position as one of the joint venturers was no defense. It characterized O’Neil’s status as joint venturer-employer as coincidental. Smith, at 320. In Marcus the plaintiff Marcus filed an action alleging violations of the Structural Work Act against a partnership consisting of Herman Schroeder and Jim Green and their wives. Green and Schroeder and their wives were the owners of the land. Jim Green, in addition to being a member of the partnership owning the land, was also the contractor who was retained by contract to construct the building on the land. Jim Green employed Marcus in his business as contractor. A jury brought in a verdict against the Green and Schroeder partnership. When Green sought to avoid liability because he was Marcus’ employer the court found that he could not avoid liability because he happened to occupy the second status as an employer. The coincidental status that the defendants in both Smith and Marcus occupied is distinguishable from the status the plaintiff occupied here where he was directly employed by the defendant. Here there was no circumstance which intervened to give the employer a second capacity. The plaintiff brings his action against the employer as his employer. The concept advanced by the majority imposing common law liability on employers based on mere ownership of land provides a considerable exception to the rule that shields employers from common law liability because of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. The effect of the majority opinion is that every employee who works for an employer who happens to own the land may have a common law cause of action for the employer’s negligence despite the Workmen’s Compensation Act. There is another broad extension of liability of the employer which is not so clearly articulated in the opinion. That extension concerns the Structural Work Act. It appears as though the foundation of the liability of the employer here is the ownership of the land. The concept of ownership of land has no legal significance. The Structural Work Act imposes liability upon “any owner, contractor, subcontractor, foreman or other person having charge of * * *” the construction. The ownership referred to is only descriptive of a category of persons who may have charge of construction. Since the ownership has no significance in and of itself under the Act, the holding of the court here is in effect that any employee can sue his own employer for violations of the Structural Work Act. This is squarely at odds with Smith which held, in a part of the opinion not previously referred to in this dissent, that an employee had no cause of action against his employer under the Structural Work Act. I would affirm the judgment of the trial court.