Lee v. Sisters and Brothers

• Court: Vermont Superior Court
• Decided: March 30, 2026
• Docket: 24-cv-40
• Status: Unknown

Opinion

VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT CIVIL DIVISION Washington Unit Case No. 24-CV-00040 65 State Street Montpelier VT 05602 802-828-2091 www.vermontjudiciary.org Joseph Lee v. Sisters and Brothers Investment Group, LLP, et al

ENTRY REGARDING MOTION

Title: Motion for Summary Judgment (Motion: 3) Filer: Thomas J. Fay Filed Date: October 01, 2025

The motion is DENIED.

The present motion for summary judgment is premised on a narrow legal

issue, specifically whether Third-Party Defendant Cascade Drilling, LLC, is

responsible under a theory of implied indemnity for creating the dangerous condition

at Third-Party Plaintiff Sisters and Brothers Investment Group, LLC’s gas station

that has been alleged as the basis for Plaintiff Joseph Lee’s injuries.

Much of the law of implied indemnity is undisputed. Bardwell Motor Inn, Inc.

v. Accavallo, 135 Vt. 571, 572–73 (1977). In effect, if a party is sued for a dangerous

condition that they did not create, and the negligence can be shown to be caused by

another’s negligence, then the party may seek indemnification under the common

Entry Regarding Motion Page 1 of 5 24-CV-00040 Joseph Lee v. Sisters and Brothers Investment Group, LLP, et al law from the negligent source party. Id. (citing to Restatement of Restitution § 95

(1937)). In Bardwell, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed a trial court decision

allowing a motor lodge to pursue a door installer for the judgment that the motor

lodge received when a customer was injured walking through a glass door that had

just been negligently repaired by the door installer.

In this case, Cascade’s motion leaves more questions unanswered than

resolved. The record indicates that Cascade installed a monitoring well at the gas

station in 2017 at the behest of a soil monitoring company working for Sisters and

Brothers. Cascade states that their only contractual relationship and duty was to

the soil monitoring company, but this misses the point of implied indemnity. The

concept is a common law concept and is not tied to strict concepts of privity as

contractual indemnity might be. As the Vermont Supreme Court has stated:

Implied indemnity should be imputed only when equitable considerations concerning the nature of the parties’ obligations to one another or the significant difference in the kind or quality of their conduct demonstrate that it is fair to shift the entire loss occasioned by the injury from one party to another. Implied indemnification is usually appropriate only when the indemnitee is vicariously or secondarily liable to a third person because of some legal relationship with that person or because of the indemnitee’s failure to discover a dangerous condition caused by the act of the indemnitor, who is primarily responsible for the condition.

Entry Regarding Motion Page 2 of 5 24-CV-00040 Joseph Lee v. Sisters and Brothers Investment Group, LLP, et al Knisely v. Central Hosp., 171 Vt. 644, 646 (2000) (mem.) (internal quotations and

citations omitted).

In other words, implied indemnity can arise in two general circumstances.

The first is where a party become liable for a dangerous situation that is entirely the

responsibility of another party. Any evidence that the first party shares or retains an

obligations or nondelegable duty to ensure the safety of the site can nullify such a

claim. Id. at 647 (discussing a hospital’s non-delegable duty to provide a safe

workplace). The other is where the first party becomes liable duty to the negligence

of another party that the first party had not had an opportunity to discover. This

second is closer to the facts of Bardwell.

In either case, the Court will need to know several key facts. What is the

nature of the party’s relationship. This is not simply an issue contractual privity, but

it is more akin to a chain of work that one party might provide to another. In this

case, while Cascade was not hired directly by the gas station, its work was done for

a contractor hired by the gas station and was in service to the gas station’s needs.

The Court cannot rule as a matter of law that the relationship s were so attenuated

that it was unforeseeable that Cascade’s work and any negligence would not

ensnare Sisters and Brothers.

Entry Regarding Motion Page 3 of 5 24-CV-00040 Joseph Lee v. Sisters and Brothers Investment Group, LLP, et al Moreover, the salient question is what was Cascade’s scope of work in 2017?

Was Cascade obligated to simply dig a well, which the soil monitoring company

would then take over and prepare? Or was Cascade’s work entirely its own from

start to completion? In other words, did the Plaintiff in this case slip and fall on a

well dug and finished by Cascade, or was Cascade merely a subcontractor whose

responsibility for the well ended once it was dug, and then responsibility transferred

to the soil monitor or to the gas station to finish and prepare? Who was responsible

for maintaining the well site? Was the well site in the same condition as Cascade

left it? What did Sisters and Brothers know about the well site in the fives years

between installation and injury? Did Sisters and Brothers fail to cordon off a known

danger? Is the injury a result of a dangerous condition inherent in the well site or a

failure to monitor the site?

At least some of these factual issues are critical to the Court’s implied

indemnity analysis to understand whether the conditions at the site constituted a

dangerous condition created by Cascade or whether an intervening party took

responsibility for the site. Without further information, the Court is left to speculate

and can neither grant nor deny the motion. The record for the conditions at this site

is not sufficiently developed in Cascade’s motion for the Court to draw conclusions

under V.R.C.P. 56(a) that there are no disputed material facts, and that Cascade is

or is not entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

Entry Regarding Motion Page 4 of 5 24-CV-00040 Joseph Lee v. Sisters and Brothers Investment Group, LLP, et al For these reasons, Cascade’s Motion for Summary Judgment is Denied at

this time, but it may re-file as the factual record is developed to provide sufficient

basis to analyze the nature of its obligations and whether the record shows a lack of

legal relationship

Electronically signed on 11/4/2025 7:20 PM pursuant to V.R.E.F. 9(d)

__________________________________ Daniel Richardson Superior Court Judge

Entry Regarding Motion Page 5 of 5 24-CV-00040 Joseph Lee v. Sisters and Brothers Investment Group, LLP, et al