If we hire someone to do some work on our roof, say, and he falls and injures himself while on the job, are we financially responsible? If he’s a licensed contractor (we live in AZ), does that answer change? Should some disclaimer be included in a work contract? Should we only hire someone who can prove he has health insurance?
And, in a related question, I’ve read stories about burglars who got hurt while robbing a home (fell through the skylight in one example) and sued the homeowner for his injuries. Is that an urban legend, do judges really allow that kind of ridiculous lawsuit, and do the plaintiffs really win damages when suing their own victims?
You need to have the worker provide proof of insurance. It’s not health insurance, it’s liability insurance. It’s a standard document. Around here it’s also a standard question. Anybody legitimate will have one and give you a copy. I doubt if being licensed makes any difference, but I don’t know Arizona law.
I could be wrong, but isn’t this what bonding is for? I know bonding prevents loss if damage is caused by the contractor, but doesn’t it also indemnify the homeowner against injury to a contractor’s employee?
I would be gladly proven wrong, because I don’t know for sure, so it’s an interesting question to me also.
The universally correct answer for all legal questions also applies here – Maybe.
There are all kinds of variables including the nature of the business relationship between the worker and you, and the cause of the injury. Could a jury find that you created a dangerous situation or environment that led to an accident?
Interesting questions. In the falling-off-the-roof example, I hardly should be held liable for causing my roof to slant. It’s a pretty standard roof design.
I wonder how many of these lawsuits are really brought and how successful they are.
A lot of people think the same thing about ice on their sidewalks in the winter. They didn’t put it there. Yet, lawsuits happen – in fact, they happen so often that there’s a common phrase for them --“slip and fall accidents”".
I’m sure it’s possible for for there to be a slip and fall accident that starts on your roof, though it might not involve ice.
Ok no offense but the amount of misinformation in this thread is huge.
The good new is most are common misconceptions.
First, in many states when you hire someone the homeowner becomes the employer. So the person hired is and employee or an independent contractor.
If they are found to be employees the homeowner can be held responsible for taxes, workers comp coverage and other requirements if they apply.
Now about liability insurance and if they have it. This does nothing to protect the homeowner from requirements of employment, this insurance is for things such as damage caused to your home or others while he is working in his professional capacity.
Bonding was also brought up. Bonding is almost useless in reality. Most bonds cover such things as payment of taxes or dishonesty of employees and since most all bonds carry a conviction clause and no one usually can prove who stole what, they almost never pay out. At an average cost of only $100.00 a year you can see what “bonded” is actually worth.
Work Comp. is the key. Making sure the contractor has a valid work comp certificate that also covers the owner as sometime they exclude themselves, if he is working at the home. This is the best way to cover you for employment injury issues.
Please call the company to make sure the paper cert. is real there is a hot traffic in fake certs.
Check your state laws, particularly those governing workman’s compensation. In at least some states, you are supposed to pay into workman’s compensation if you hire people to work in your home. In other states it is advisable as a way to protect yourself.
The basic issue here is who has to pay if a workman working in your home becomes injured. If you are dealing with a licensed and bonded contractor, then that individual should be paying into the state workman’s compensation fund and you should be protected. In the event of an injury and a lawsuit, you would point to the contractor saying I hired him; the person injured is his employee not mine.
But there have been cases (I can’t give you a cite but I know there have been such cases in Ohio at least) where it turns out the contractor hadn’t paid for the required insurances, and therefore the contract between the contractor and the homeowner was found to be defective, and therefore the homeowner was held as the de facto employer of the person doing the work.
Similarly, if you ARE the employer - you hired some casual labor to do a job - then the responsibility WILL fall on you if an injury occurs, particularly if the person doing the work was not following all the OSHA safety rules, and using proper tools in proper condition properly. If this happens, you can expect to lose the lawsuit.
Not quite. Bonding, in the sense that is meant in relation to contractors, means a bond for completion of the work. Contractor pays the fee to the bonding company, and the bonding company guarantees the work contracted for will be completed. If the original contractor doesn’t finish the work, the bonding company pays another one to complete it. It’s mostly something in major construction jobs. I used to be a construction inspector, and this came up once or twice in the 13 years I did that job, when one contractor would go bankrupt or something, and the contract would get completed by a different one. It rarely comes up in a homeowner type of contract. Unless you pay for the work up front, which you shouldn’t do, you won’t need to worry about bonding for a residential job.
Very well said. Surety bonding is pretty much as you describe, but I will add a few kinds of bonds in addition to guarantee bonds: labour and materials payment bonds, court bonds, fidelity bonds, and the like. The important thing to remember is that bonding is not insurance, and no bond underwriter will write a bond if it seems that the principal will default.
It is a fee-for-service industry, and can be very lucrative for the bond underwriters who can understand contracts and who know their contractors.
Being an employee and being an independent contractor are wholly different things. (And believe me, the IRS will confirm this.) Yes, you should always check your state’s law for what your relationship will be. Same for being on the hiree side because everything changes. I found the page for New York State which lays out the differences. I couldn’t find as concise a page for Arizona, but this webpage has links on it that show the differences.
It is not true that you can hire an independent contractor and wake up one morning finding that you have turned into an employer. They are separate relationships. I would like to see those cites about it happening and read the full circumstances of the cases. Plenty of weird things happen under law and I’m not going to rule it out, but you’re more likely to be hit by lightning than to have this happen to you.
While it is strictly a matter of state law, I did find a recent CA SC case on it as an example. Your state may differ. I do agree with Expanse though, to suggest this is similar law in every state, without a direct compilation is not correct.
I do not even know the law in my state without researching. For minimum wage law purposes, we use the defintion of “Employer” from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Whether this applies to hiring an Independent contractor, I don’t know. The CA case specifically has a defintion in it’s labor code.
Some howeowners insurance covers this, even though the person was a tresspasser. By law though, I seriously doubt it imputes liability to a homeower.
If we equate this with general Premises Liabilty case law, a business is not an insurer of a business invitee’s safety, of course emphasis added for specific facts.
Thus, you are safe if you don’t try to clean your sidewalk…the accumulation is a “natural accumulation”.
However, if you DO clean your sidewalk and do a less than thorough job of it, or if ice forms where you cleared it and someone falls, then you can be held liable in Ohio.
I used to live in Ohio and, in fact, I used to be an employer in Ohio. I left about 7 years ago.
This exact conversation is a conversation that I had on at least one occasion with my attorney, with him warning me that if I had anyone do work on my house or property I could face these issues.
My response was that it was absurd and I didn’t believe it. His response was that a strict reading of the law…etc. He also said there was case law.
Now I can’t tell you there is case law; I don’t know. I just took a quick look around the internet on the topic and I don’t have the keywords refined properly; I keep coming up with lots of irrelevant stuff, so I presume I would have to do a fair amount of research to find such a case.
Now, perhaps the fact that I already was an employer affected all of this…I can’t say for sure. But I do recall discussing hypotheticals with him as I tried to get this straight in my own head, and what I came away with was pretty much as I already described it.
So, I’m not trying to tell anyone here that “I’m right and you have to believe me” on this topic. I’m not going to swear I’m right and I do think it is absurd.
But, it is also my understanding of the situation in the state of Ohio, and that is where I got the information from. It’s worth at least what it’s costing you.