Court Opinion

ID: 9483875
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:33:50.671426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:53.117403
License: Public Domain

RYAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that Bowater Incorporated is a statutory employer entitled to the exclusive remedy provisions of Tennessee workers’ compensation law. I therefore respectfully dissent.
The policy behind Tenn.Code Ann. § 50-6-113 (1992) is
to insure as far as possible to all workers payment of benefits when they [are] injured in the course of their employment. ... The section passes coverage from employers who might not have coverage to intermediate or principal contractors who do have coverage. This prevents employers from contracting out normal work simply to avoid liability for worker’s compensation.
Stratton v. United Inter-Mountain Tel. Co., 695 S.W.2d 947, 951 (Tenn.1985) (citations omitted). As an initial matter, I note that the statutory policy, as framed by Tennessee courts, is not implicated in this case: Bechtel Construction, a huge international construction company, is not the type of irresponsible employer not likely to carry worker’s compensation insurance. Instead, as the majority opinion notes, the contract between Bechtel and Bowater specifically required Bechtel to obtain workers’ compensation insurance and, in fact, certain of the plaintiff’s costs incurred as a result of the accident were covered by that policy. Of course, the mere fact that the policy underlying the statute is not implicated here would not alter the outcome if the language of the statute embraced the facts of the case. My reading of the two principal Tennessee supreme court cases addressing this issue, Stratton, 695 S.W.2d at 947, and Acklie v. Carrier, 785 S.W.2d 355 (Tenn.1990), as well as a significant number of published and unpublished Tennessee courts of appeal decisions, satisfies me that section 50-6-113 does not embrace the facts of this case.
As the majority opinion notes, Stratton cited six indicia of control relevant to the determination whether an owner is also a principal contractor. Stratton, 695 S.W.2d at 950. Tennessee courts utilize these factors in an attempt to categorize the relationship between the owner of the premises and the employer of the injured employee— here, Bowater and Bechtel, respectively. The Tennessee courts employ an analogy between employer/employee and customer/independent contractor relationships: if the relationship between Bowater and Bechtel is most akin to a relationship between an employer and employee, Bowater should be deemed a principal contractor; if, alternatively, it is more like the relationship of a customer and an independent contractor, Bowater should be deemed a mere owner, and not a principal contractor. See id. at 951; see also Manis v. American Cable Sys. of Tennessee, 640 F.Supp. 427, 430 (E.D.Tenn.1986). The majority opinion lists the six Stratton indicia of control and concludes that because Bowater meets many of these criteria, it must be a principal contractor under Tennessee law. Closer scrutiny of the facts of this case reveal, however, that certain elements of apparent control were only necessary by-products of the exigencies peculiar to administering a cost-plus contract, and to having major construction work done at a site where Bowa-ter’s normal business was in continuous operation. That is, Bowater exercised some discretion over selection of subcontractors by Bechtel not in order to supervise the quality of their construction work but only in order to reduce prices, because the contract was cost-plus. Bowater exercised some discretion over the daily schedule of operations not because they had a particular construction agenda but only to ensure that Bechtel’s and the subcontractor’s work would not interfere with Bowa-ter’s regular business operations. The control exercised by the owner/principal contractor in Stratton and Acklie was directly related to the construction work itself, and it is for that reason that the relationship *282between the owner and the employer of the injured employee was deemed to be most like an employer/employee relationship. See Acklie, 785 S.W.2d at 358; Stratton, 695 S.W.2d at 952-53. Here, the relationship between Bowater and Bechtel was much more akin to a customer and an independent contractor, or, as one court reasoned, to a “homeowner’s hiring someone to paint his house.” Fugunt v. TVA, 545 F.Supp. 977, 980 (E.D.Tenn.1982).
I believe the majority erroneously focuses on the superficial aspects of the contract between Bowater and Bechtel, rather than inquiring into the meaning of the terms that indicate control by Bowater. The control exercised here was control only over the bottom-line and the coordination of Bo-water’s business with Bechtel’s construction.1 It was not the kind of control on which Tennessee courts have predicated a determination that an owner is also a prin-' cipal contractor: that is, control over the construction.
In addition, there are two important distinctions between this case and the precedents relied on in the majority opinion. In Stratton and Acklie, as well as in many other Tennessee cases, an important factor in the court’s determination was that the contractor hired by the owner was hired to perform the same type of work the owner’s employees usually performed. The court in Stratton discussed “typical independent contractor situations: an employer subcontracts work that is totally different from his regular line of work and therefore cannot be adequately performed by his own employees.” Id. at 952. This situation was contrasted with the situation before the court, where the plaintiff “performed work usually performed by regular Telephone Company employees.” Id.; see also Manis, 640 F.Supp. at 429; Fugunt, 545 F.Supp. at 980; Dixson v. Union Carbide Corp., No. 1127, slip. op., 1987 WL 28389 (Tenn.Ct.App. Dec. 23, 1987); Vick v. Nashville Bridge Co., No. 87-131-11, slip op., 1987 WL 18955 (Tenn.Ct.App. Oct. 28, 1987); Acklie, 785 S.W.2d at 358; Carpenter v. Hooker Chem. & Plastics, 553 S.W.2d 356, 357 (Tenn.Ct.App.1977).
Here, it is undisputed that Bowater’s employees did not customarily engage in the type of construction and construction administration that Bechtel was hired to perform, and that Bowater and Bechtel employees were not working side-by-side on this project. Bowater hired Bechtel to oversee the construction operations that Bowater was not equipped to oversee; thus, Bowater was not acting as a principal contractor when it hired Bechtel.
Furthermore, in none of the Tennessee cases that determined that the owner occupied the dual role of owner and principal contractor was there also an entity that filled the role that Bechtel filled here. Anyone looking at the functions performed by Bechtel under its contract with Bowater would describe Bechtel as the principal, or general, contractor. Tennessee case law has never held that there can be two principal contractors in a given ease. This again strongly indicates to me that Bowater was not occupying the role of a principal contractor, as that role has been understood by the Tennessee courts.
I would conclude that Bowater was an owner, and nothing more, under Tennessee law. I believe that the plaintiff is entitled to sue Bowater in tort for the injuries he sustained while working on Bowater’s premises, because Bowater was not his statutory employer, and that the exclusive remedy provisions of Tennessee workers’ compensation law therefore are not applicable here. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

. See factors considered in footnote 1 of the majority opinion.