Garcia v. Pittsylvania County Service Authority

845 F.2d 465
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedApril 26, 1988
DocketNos. 87-2091, 87-2092
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 845 F.2d 465 (Garcia v. Pittsylvania County Service Authority) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Garcia v. Pittsylvania County Service Authority, 845 F.2d 465 (4th Cir. 1988).

Opinion

WIDENER, Circuit Judge:

Jesus Garcia and Elfido Morales, plaintiffs, appeal the denial of their claims for damages against Pittsylvania County Service Authority and William C. Overman Associates. For the reasons stated below, we affirm.

Plaintiffs were seriously injured on July 11, 1985 in an explosion while engaged in the construction of a sewer interceptor line. The line was owned by and under construction at the direction of the Authority, which, with financing from the Environmental Protection Agency and Farmers Home Administration, was constructing a portion of a major sanitary sewer system in the county, this section being known as the Sandy River Interceptor. Overman Associates, P.C., was engaged by the Authority by contract to perform engineering services for the entire project.

The Authority awarded the contract for the Sandy River section of the project designated 83-5-S to Roanoke Construction Company. Garcia and Morales were employees of Roanoke. The work performed included digging trenches, laying pipe and blasting rock. The plaintiffs were injured when a jackhammer being operated by Morales came into contact with an unexploded dynamite charge left from earlier blasting.

Roanoke is a North Carolina corporation with its principal place of business in that State. Plaintiffs are North Carolina residents and were employed by Roanoke in that State, they say pursuant to oral contracts of employment. They have received workers’ compensation benefits pursuant to the North Carolina Workers’ Compensation Act, N.C.Gen.Stat. § 97-1, et seq, on account of Roanoke’s workers' compensation coverage. They subsequently filed these actions in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia against the Authority and Overman, on June 18, 1986, seeking damages on account of their injuries. Defendants moved to dismiss the complaints on the grounds, inter alia, that plaintiffs’ actions were barred by the exclusive remedy provision of the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Act, Va. Code § 65.1, et seq. The district court dismissed the complaints for the reason that the claims were so barred, and these appeals followed.

Prior to Carroll v. Lanza, 349 U.S. 408, 75 S.Ct. 804, 99 L.Ed. 1183 (1955), it had been held, in Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. Goode Const. Co., 97 F.Supp. 316 (E.D.Va.1951), that Solomon v. Call, 159 Va. 625, 166 S.E. 467 (1932), held that Virginia looked to the State of the injured workman’s residence, when the accident occurred within Virginia, and the contract of employment was in the State of residence of the workman. In both of these cases, the Virginia workers’ compensation law was held not to apply to employees, injured in Virginia, who were residents of other States, working for out of state employers, in Virginia, thus allowing the injured employee to pursue his action for negligence against his employer in Liberty Mutual and against a stranger in Solomon.

The Supreme Court, however, in Carroll, held that, in workers’ compensation cases involving differing state compensation statutes, the State where the injury occurred was not required to give full faith and credit to the workers’ compensation act of the State of employment. The Court relied on Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Commission, 306 U.S. 493, 59 S.Ct. 629, 83 L.Ed. 940 (1939), which had held that the law of the forum State might prevail if the injury occurred in the forum, and stated that one State might not preclude another “from prescribing for itself the legal consequences of acts within it.” 306 U.S. at 505, 59 S.Ct. at 634.

Under Virginia law, after Carroll, this court affirmed a summary judgment granted by the district court, on essential facts indistinguishable from those present here, in favor of a Virginia defendant in Home Indemnity Company of New York v. Poladian, 270 F.2d 156 (4th Cir.1959). The employee in Home Indemnity was a resident of the District of Columbia working for a D.C. employer (a subcontractor) on a construction project in Virginia. After being injured on the job, the employee elected to recover compensation in the District of Columbia, and Home Indemnity as subro-[467]*467gee brought suit on the employee’s claim against the general contractor. This court stated that “in determining whether an actionable tort has been committed in Virginia we look to its laws, for it is within Virginia’s competence to take away the common law right of action if it deems more just to award fixed compensation irrespective of negligence.” 270 F.2d at 158. We held that the general contractor, as a statutory employer who had complied with the Virginia Act, was protected from the action in negligence by the Act even though no such bar existed under District of Columbia law.

In the case of McCann v. Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, 177 F.Supp. 909 (E.D.Va.1959), the district court followed Carroll and Home Indemnity and held that the law of the State of the accident controls the remedy sought in that particular forum. 177 F.Supp. at 913. The court declined to follow Liberty Mutual’s construction of Solomon. Thus, a New Jersey resident who was an employee of a New Jersey company, injured on the job at the defendant’s shipyard in Virginia, who had collected compensation in New Jersey, was not allowed to bring suit in Virginia against the shipyard owner because the plaintiff had a right to workers’ compensation against the shipyard owner, a statutory employer. The court further found that the defendant had complied with the workers’ compensation act, and was the statutory employer of the injured employee who was engaged in the “trade, business or occupation” of the shipyard at the time the injury occurred. 177 F.Supp. at 914.

It is apparent to us, in the development of the law on the question at hand from Solomon to the present, that McCann states the present law of Virginia on the subject, and even if Liberty Mutual was a correct construction of Solomon at the time it was decided, it no longer has validity in view of Carroll and Home Indemnity. We are thus of opinion that the law of Virginia controls for this accident which occurred in Virginia and was occasioned by the negligence of an independent contractor with the Authority who was doing work in Virginia and required by Virginia law to have workers’ compensation insurance.

Most of the rest of the questions in the case are answered by Anderson v. Thorington Construction Co., 201 Va. 266, 110 S.E.2d 396 (1959). In that case, the Richmond-Petersburg Turkpike Authority was arranging for the construction of a portion of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike. The Authority was a political subdivision of the Commonwealth created to construct the turnpike. It engaged Thorington Construction Company and another as joint adventurers to perform a section of the work. The Turnpike Authority also engaged an engineering firm to provide the services of consulting engineers for the project. It was the engineers’ duty to see that the construction was performed in accordance with approved specifications.

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