SeaBright Ins. Co. v. US Airways, Inc

In SeaBright Ins. Co. v. US Airways, Inc. (2011) 52 Cal.4th 590, the Supreme Court considered whether the Privette doctrine applied outside the peculiar risk context to a case alleging breach of a nondelegable duty under section 424 of the Restatement Second of Torts (precautions required by a statute or regulation). SeaBright arose out of an injury to an employee of an independent contractor hired by US Airways (USAir) to maintain and repair its airport luggage conveyor. The injury allegedly occurred because the conveyor lacked safety guards required by the California Occupational Safety and Health Act (Cal-OSHA) (Lab. Code, 6300 et seq.). The independent contractor's insurer, SeaBright, paid workers' compensation benefits to the injured employee and then sued USAir, contending that the airline was responsible for the employee's injuries under the nondelegable duty doctrine because the duty to provide safety guards derived from a " 'statute or by administrative regulation.' " (SeaBright, at p. 596.) The trial court granted summary judgment for USAir, and the insurer appealed. (Id. at pp. 594-595.) The Court of Appeal reversed, concluding that USAir's duty under Cal-OSHA to ensure that the conveyor had safety guards was nondelegable. (SeaBright, supra, 52 Cal.4th 590 at p. 595.) The Supreme Court disagreed and reinstated the grant of summary judgment. The court explained that unless the relevant statutes or regulations provide otherwise, a hirer is presumed to have delegated to an independent contractor any tort law duty it owes to the contractor's employees to ensure the safety of the workplace that is the subject of the contract. (Id. at p. 594 & fn. 1.) As relevant to the present case, Cal-OSHA did not indicate an intent to preclude delegation of the tort law duty the hirer owed to the independent contractor's employees. Thus, the court said, USAir had delegated to its independent contractor its tort duty to provide a safe workplace for the contractor's employees, and USAir was not vicariously liable for the employee's injury. (Ibid.) The Court extended the general rule, revived in Privette and its progeny, allowing hirers to delegate workplace safety obligations to independent contractors, to cases involving statutory workplace safety requirements (there, Cal-OSHA regulations governing airline luggage conveyors (id. at p. 594)). The court disagreed with the Court of Appeal's holding that such statutory duties were nondelegable: "By hiring an independent contractor, the hirer implicitly delegates to the contractor any tort law duty it owes to the contractor's employees to ensure the safety of the specific workplace that is the subject of the contract," including the duty to comply with safety-related statutes and regulations. (Ibid.) The court relied heavily on the fact that workers' compensation statutes ensure contractor's employees a remedy; that the hirer indirectly bears the cost of providing that remedy because the contract price it pays presumably includes the cost of workers' compensation insurance; that the risk and costs of performing dangerous work are thus spread to those who benefit from that work; and that it would be unfair to permit injured employees to obtain full tort damages from a hirer when they could not recover them from their employer who caused the injury. (Id. at p. 603.)