INDIANA BUSINESS LAW BLOG

Construction Manager Liability: Part three

September 7, 2012 | Michael R. Smith

I explained in my last two posts how construction managers can be subject to liability when a construction contractor’s employee is injured. Ordinarily, the construction manager has no duty to provide a safe workplace for the employees of a construction contractor and, therefore, is generally not liable for injuries to those employees. However, a construction manager can assume a duty to those employees in one of two ways — either by contract or by actions — and end up with liability for injuries.

For that reason, some construction managers have been reluctant to have any involvement with safety programs. By drafting contracts carefully, a construction manager can be fairly certain of not assuming a duty contractually, but it is difficult to know exactly what actions a construction manager can or cannot take without incurring liability. The Plan-Tec and Hunt cases discussed in our last post create some certainty. Specifically, a construction manager may take on contractual commitments to perform certain actions without assuming a duty to the employees of construction contractors and, consequentially, without incurring liability it would not otherwise have.

However, the construction management must avoid contractually undertaking to be the “insurer of safety for everyone on the project.” Here are some examples of what a construction manager should include in the construction management contract:

(a) To “make certain its avoidance of liability” the court in Hunt said a construction manager can include a provision with language expressly disavowing responsibility for job-site safety (EX: “in no case shall…the Construction Manager…have either direct or indirect responsibility for matters relative to Project safety.”).

(b) In Plan-Tec, the court held that the construction manager had not assumed a duty because the construction management contract “unequivocally state[d] that the contractors were to have the responsibility for project safety and the safety of their employees.” This language demonstrates that the responsibility for project safety belonged to the construction contractors, not the construction manager.

(c) Hunt’s contract stated that the construction manager’s services were “rendered solely for the benefit of the [Project Owner] and not for the benefit of the Contractors, the Architect, or other parties performing Work or services with respect to the Project.” This confirmed that no one but the Project Owner, not even a subcontractor’s injured employee, could expect to “benefit” from Hunt’s contract with the Project Owner or claim the contract obligated Hunt to assure their safety.

(d) Hunt’s contract provided that Hunt was not “assuming the safety obligations and responsibilities of the individual Contractors,” and that Hunt was not to have “control over or charge of or be responsible for…safety precautions and programs in connection with the Work of each of the Contractors, since these are the Contractor’s responsibilities.” In addition, it said that the construction contractor was the “controlling employer responsible for its own safety programs and precautions,” and Hunt’s responsibility to review, monitor, and coordinate those programs did “not extend to direct control over or charge of the acts or omissions of the Contractors, Subcontractors, their agents or employees or any other persons performing portions of the Work and not directly employed by Hunt.” This proved that Hunt was not vicariously liable for a subcontractor’s negligence in executing its own safety precautions.

Given the above contract provisions which help construction managers to avoid contractually assuming responsibility for job-site safety, consider one related reminder about avoiding liability as a result of actions. Remember how construction managers can become liable when they voluntarily perform safety obligations beyond what they previously agreed to in the construction management contract? For this reason, one last contract provision which would benefit construction managers could require that, if the project owner demands that construction manager begin to perform additional safety obligations, such new obligations would first be incorporated into the original contract via an amendment. This would serve as a contractual way to manage the risk of that other means of incurring liability – the construction manager’s actions.

Now, here are some examples of what a construction manager seeking to avoid liability should not include in a construction management contract:

(a) Provisions by which the construction manager accepts the “duty to maintain safety on the project.”

(b) Provisions providing that the construction manager is responsible for the contractors’ compliance with state and federal regulations. A provision like that could show that the construction manager was undertaking legal oversight of the subcontractors. As recounted in point (d) above, construction managers can safely contract to review, monitor, and coordinate safety programs and precautions, but not to be responsible for those programs as the “controlling employer.” The important inquiry is whether the construction manager has agreed to ensure contractors’ compliance with the law or whether the construction manager has only agreed to monitor contractors’ compliance for the project owner.

(d) Language such as: The construction manager “shall take all necessary precautions for the safety of employees on the work.”

(e) Language such as: The construction manager “shall take all necessary precautions for the safety of all employees on the project.”

Ultimately, the Indiana Supreme Court held that even though Hunt had agreed to some safety-related responsibilities in the original contract, those responsibilities didn’t invoke “vicarious liability.” In doing so, the court chose to further the policy of providing “a way of promoting safety without exposing contract managers to suits like this one,” rather than encourage construction managers to avoid taking on any responsibility for promoting job-site safety for fear of incurring liability.
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Construction Manager Liability: Part two

July 18, 2012 | Michael R. Smith

As discussed in my last post, general contractors and construction managers have very different roles in a construction project. General contractors are sometimes sued when their subcontractor’s employees are injured on the job, but that’s not as often the case for construction managers. In addition, the liability analysis is quite different for construction managers because, unlike general contractors, construction managers do not have overall responsibility to perform the construction and they generally only contract with project owners, not with other subcontractors. A recent Indiana Supreme Court opinion, (“Hunt Construction Group, Inc. v. Garrett“) (“Hunt“)sheds light on the analysis of construction manager liability.

The opinion concluded litigation which had arisen out an accident which occurred during the construction of the Lucas Oil Stadium. In Hunt, a subcontractor’s employee was injured and subsequently sued the construction manager (“Hunt”). The Hunt court based its analysis on Plan-Tec, Inc. v. Wiggins (“Plan-Tec“), the first reported case in Indiana where the employee of a subcontractor sued a construction manager. Indiana courts use Plan-Tec as a “template” to evaluate claims of negligence against construction managers for injuries suffered by subcontractors’ employees, and the central test of the template specifically says that “a construction manager owes a legal duty of care for job-site employee safety in two circumstances: (1) when such a duty is imposed upon the construction manager by a contract to which it is a party, or (2) when the construction manager assumes such a duty, either gratuitously or voluntarily.'” Thus, a court will determine whether a construction manager is liable for the employee’s injury based on the construction manager’s contracts and actions, and only one of these is necessary to prove liability.

Three things in Plan-Tec led the court to find no contractual liability for the construction manager: (1) The construction manager’s contract did not specify that the construction manager had any safety responsibilities, (2) the subcontractor’s contracts clearly indicated they had responsibility for project safety and the safety of their employees, and (3) the subcontractor’s contracts expressly disclaimed that the construction manager had any direct or indirect responsibility for project safety.

Unlike in Plan-Tec, in Hunt, the construction manager’s contract did impose some general safety-related responsibilities on the construction manager. For example, Hunt was responsible for approving contractors’ safety programs, monitoring compliance with safety regulations, performing inspections, and addressing safety violations. Hunt also had the ability to remove any employee or piece of equipment deemed unsafe. However, the court determined that none of the safety-related provisions imposed on Hunt a specific legal duty to or responsibility for the safety of all employees at the construction site. Instead, the contract included “clear language limiting [Hunt’s] liability” which persuaded the court that the construction manager did not have a legal duty of care to subcontractor’s employees for job-site safety. We will explore that specific contractual language which limited Hunt’s liability in the next post.

But even if construction managers are not liable because of their contracts, they can still, by their actions or conduct, assume “a legal duty for job-site employee safety.” In Plan-Tec, it was Plan-Tec’s assuming of new supervisory duties beyond those required by the initial construction documents and after the project had already begun which raised the issue of whether it had assumed by its actions such a legal duty of care. For example, Plan-Tec took on extra responsibility by appointing a safety director, initiating weekly safety meetings, directing that certain safety precautions be taken by the subcontractors, and daily inspecting the scaffolding (which scaffolding ultimately injured the employee in that case). However, in Hunt, the court affirmed that the Plan-Tec ruling does not mean that a construction manager must avoid all such responsibilities in order to avoid liability for workplace injuries. In fact, Hunt had equally undertaken each of the previously mentioned actions taken by Plan-Tec. The difference was that, in Hunt’s situation, none of these actions were beyond those required by the original construction documents, and (as discussed above) those documents limited Hunt’s liability. This simple fact indicated to the court that Hunt did not by its actions assume a legal duty for the employee’s safety. Because Hunt neither assumed a duty by its contracts nor its actions, Hunt prevailed.
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Construction Manager Liability: Part one of a three-part series

July 5, 2012 | Michael R. Smith

When it comes to occupational injuries, the construction industry is among the most dangerous. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010 there were more fatal occupational injuries in construction than in any other private industry sector. And when a worker is injured, it sometimes leads to a lawsuit.

In most cases, the workers’ compensation statue (in Indiana, Ind. Code 22-3) restricts the amount an injured worker can recover from his or her employer to the amount of workers’ compensation insurance, but it does not limit the amount the worker can recover from anyone else. See Ind. Code 22-3-2-13. For example, the workers’ compensation statute does not prohibit an employee of a construction subcontractor from recovering from the general contractor or a construction manager. It is not uncommon for general contractors to be sued when their subcontractor’s employees are injured on the job, and there are a number of reported cases in Indiana dealing with that type of claim. However, in the recent case of Hunt Construction Group, Inc. v. Garrett, the Indiana Supreme Court had an opportunity to address the liability of a construction manager. I’ll discuss that case in the next couple of postings, but first let’s look more closely at the difference between a general contractor and a construction manager.

Although the roles of construction managers and general contractors are sometimes confused, they are really very different. A general contractor has the obligation to the owner of a construction project to perform the work necessary to complete the project. In most cases, of course, a general contractor does not actually do all the work but rather subcontracts at least part of the work to one or more subcontractors (for example, to an electrical subcontractor or a mechanical subcontractor). In other words, the general contractor works for the owner, and the subcontractors work for the general contractor. The owner pays the general contractor for the entire cost of the project, and the general contractor pays the subcontractors out of the amount it receives from the owner. If a subcontractor makes a mistake, the general contractor is accountable to the owner for that mistake, just as if the general contractor made the mistake itself. Naturally, managing its subcontractors is an inherent part of a general contractor’s job, and the general contractor has a great deal of direct control over the subcontractors.

Sometimes, however, the owner of a project hires a construction manager to oversee the construction project and to coordinate the work of all the various contractors and subcontractors on the project. Unlike a general contractor, a construction manager is not responsible for actually building the project. The construction manager essentially acts as the owner’s on-the-site representative with responsibilities such as managing the budget, the schedule, and the contract documents; sending out bid requests and receiving bid submissions; approving subcontractors when they are hired; inspecting and approving the work; and more. There may also be a general contractor with responsibility for constructing the entire project, or the owner may contract directly with companies that would otherwise be subcontractors (e.g., electrical and mechanical subcontractors) without hiring a general contractor.

Either way, the construction contractors and subcontractors do not actually work for the construction manager; instead, they work either for the general contractor or directly for the owner. The owner does not pay the entire construction price to the construction manager; the construction manager receives only a fee, and the owner pays the construction contractors and subcontractors either directly or through the general contractor, if there is one. The only authority the construction manager has to do anything related the construction is in its capacity as the owner’s agent.

In Hunt Construction Group, Inc. v. Garrett (“Hunt“), an employee of a subcontractor, Baker Construction Company, was injured and sued the construction manager, Hunt, claiming that Hunt was vicariously liable for Baker’s actions and that Hunt negligently breached its own duty of care for job-site safety. In the next entry, we’ll see how that case came out, and in the third entry we’ll look at things a construction manager can do to minimize its exposure to liability for injuries to construction workers.
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Happy “National Small Business Week!”

May 23, 2012 | Michael R. Smith

As a mild spring finally melts into the heat of summer, perhaps you’ll soon take a moment to enjoy a small cup of lemonade from a small business on a sidewalk near you. After all it is National Small Business Week.

But while you enjoy your refreshment, consider taking the moment to pay homage to small business and ponder the following questions: What is so unique about a small business? What is it about some small businesses that set them above the rest? When it comes to the legal aspects of business, how can business owners be active rather than passive and what are the payoffs? What are the legal considerations inherent to owning and operating a small business? What about a grown-up’s small business can ensure it is any less transient than the venture which sold you your beverage?

If you are a prospective or current small business owner, you likely know first-hand the value of answering such questions earlier rather than later. During the creation of a company and after it is formed, the legal concerns which come into play should be dealt with head-on. Like the rest of a savvy entrepreneur’s endeavors, the legal tasks of business organization and transactions, when accomplished both properly and skillfully, are their own reward.

Without a doubt, small businesses are the workhorse of the U.S. economy, representing 99.7 percent of all employer firms and generating 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years (Source of data: U.S. Small Business Administration). The benefits small businesses render to local economies are no joke. An organization we support, The 3/50 Project, recognizes this reality and is setting out to “save the brick and mortars our nation is built on” in a way that is turning heads. No matter what your relation may be to the wonders of small business ownership, consider celebrating the week by exposing yourself to the simple mission of The 3/50 Project and learning in under a minute how you can very practically help to “save your local economy.”
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Righthaven Defendants Fight Back

May 19, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

On February 25, 2011 I wrote a blog post about Righthaven, LLC, a company that has made a business out of suing owners of web sites for alleged copyright infringement. At the time, Righthaven had filed at least 239 lawsuits against all sorts of defendants, including individuals, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations. The number of lawsuits has now reached at least 275, most of them in either Nevada or Colorado.

Although many of the lawsuits have been settled, some of the defendants have chosen to fight back. For example, in Righthaven LLC v. Buzzfeed, Inc., the defendants recently filed a class action counterclaim on behalf of the defendants in all the Colorado lawsuits. In their counterclaim, the defendants argue that Righthaven has committed abuse of process and violated the Colorado statute against unfair and deceptive trade practices. In support of their counterclaim, the defendants allege, among other things, that

Righthaven has asked for remedies that it knows it is not entitled to. Specificially, the counterclaim says that Righthaven has tried to lock the defendants’ websites and to get ownership of those websites.
Righthaven has attempted to coerce defendants into monetary settlements by threatening to get statutory damages and to take control of the defendants’ websites.
Righthaven has sued for infringement of copyrights that Righthaven does not own.

Form 1099 Reporting Changes Repealed

April 23, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

Last November I wrote about a new law that expanded the requirement to issue Form 1099 to include reporting of payments made to corporations and to suppliers of goods. The law was set to go into effect for payments made in 2012. In January I wrote that Representative Dan Lungren (R. California) had introduced a bill to repeal the new requirement. On April 14, President Obama signed Congressman Lungren’s bill into law, eliminating the expansion of the reporting requirements.

Is it legal for a nonprofit organization to use unpaid interns?

March 17, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[Note: The Department of Labor guidance, Fact Sheet #71, discussed in this article has been superseded as it applies to the use of unpaid interns by businesses. See the discussion of the revised policy here. The guidance as it applies to the use of unpaid interns by nonprofit organizations appears to be unchanged.]

As our last post explained, for-profit businesses are very limited in their ability to use unpaid interns legally. Unless the internship program meets six different criteria to qualify the intern as a trainee, the intern is an employee subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA.

For nonprofits, however, there is a third possibility. The intern may qualify as a volunteer, in which case the intern is not an employee under FLSA and not subject to the minimum wage and overtime compensation requirements. The footnote to Fact Sheet #71 issued last year by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division recognizes an exception to FSLA for individuals who volunteer their time to nonprofit organizations for religious, charitable, civic, or humanitarian purposes, provided they do so freely and without expecting any compensation. In those situations, unpaid internships are generally allowable.

Is it legal for a business to use unpaid interns?

March 15, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[Note: The Department of Labor guidance discussed in this article, Fact Sheet #71, has been superseded. See the discussion of the revised policy here.]

With summer vacation approaching, and with the job market being what it is, small business owners may be approached by college or high school students offering to work as undpaid interns. At first, that may seem like a great idea — the business gets free help for the summer, maybe to fill in for vacationing employees, and the student gains experience and a chance to build a resume. Sounds like a win-win situation, right?

Well, maybe not. In fact, the situation could place the business on the receiving end of a lawsuit or government enforcement action. The problem is that most interns at for-profit businesses qualify as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, or FSLA, and must be paid at least minimum wage and overtime compensation if they work more than 40 hours in a week). In other words, you can’t avoid paying minimum wage by paying nothing.

However, there is a very narrow exception for interns that qualify as “trainees.” Last April, the Department of Labor published Fact Sheet #71, listing the criteria for determining whether an intern is a trainee. If an internship has all six of the following characteristics, the intern is not classified as an employee under the FLSA.

The intern receives training similar to the training he or she would receive in an educational environment. Preferably, the program should be centered on a classroom or academic setting, not on the business’s operations. Ideally, the program should be associated with an educational institution that gives the intern academic credit for the program.

The internship is for the benefit of the intern. If the intern’s activities are primarily for the benefit of the employer (see item 5), the fact that the intern also acquires useful job skills is not sufficient to classify him or her as a trainee. Ideally, the intern will learn skills that are useful to other employers, not just to the business sponsoring the program.

The intern does not displace employees. Instead, existing employees closely supervise the intern’s work. If the business uses an internship to supplement its staff or to fill in for employees who are absent or on vacation, the intern is an employee, not a trainee.

The business does not derive an immediate advantage from the intern’s work; in fact, the internship may even impede the business’s operations. Although it can probably be argued that the business always derives some amount of benefit from the internship program, the internship must be primarily and predominantly for the benefit of the intern, not the benefit of the business.

The business will not necessarily employ the intern when the internship is finished. If the business uses the internship as a trial period for prospective employees, the intern is probably an employee, not a trainee.

The intern and the business understand that the intern will not be paid during the internship.

Given those criteria, it’s easy to understand why a Department of Labor official told The New York Times last year that most unpaid internships with for-profit businesses are not legal. (The story is different, however, for internships with governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations. That’s the topic of a future blog post.)

When the Department of Labor released Fact Sheet #71 last April, some news sources and bloggers described the six criteria listed above as “new regulations.” In fact, the criteria are are not new, and they are not regulations. They originated in 1947 with Walling v. Portland Terminal Co., a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with a training program for prospective railyard brakemen. Since then the criteria have been applied, explained, and refined by lower courts and the Department of Labor. Rather than a new regulation, Fact Sheet #71 can be seen as the Department’s warning shot across the bow of businesses that use “unpaid interns” as a source of free labor.

A note of caution about the use of these criteria. If the internship satisfies all six of the above criteria, the intern is deemed to be a trainee and not an employee, but only for determining whether the Fair Labor Standards Act applies. That’s only one of many contexts in which the categorization of a person as an “employee” carries legal significance, and different criteria apply in each of those different contexts. Even though a trainee is not an employee for FSLA purposes, he or she may be an employee for other purposes, including the relevant state labor laws.
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Always read agreements before signing them

March 10, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

Most people understand that signing a Krad v. BP Products North America, BP wanted to build a gas station on property owned by Dr. Krad. However, BP need only a portion of Dr. Krad’s property, not all of it. With the assistance of a real estate broker, BP approached Dr. Krad with a proposal to lease part of Dr. Krad’s property, and the discussions led to a letter of intent that described the approximate size of the parcel that BP would lease. Eventually, BP gave Dr. Krad a proposed lease agreement, and Dr. Krad signed it after a review by his attorney. Although a preliminary survey had been completed, the lease agreement did not contain a legal description of the leased property. Instead, it stated that another survey would be completed within sixty days after the lease agreement was signed, and the final survey report would be attached to it as an exhibit, subject to approval by both BP and Dr. Krad. In other words, the lease agreement would not be complete until Dr. Krad signed the final survey report.

After the lease agreement was signed, BP decided it needed more land than it had anticipated and ordered a final survey of a larger piece of Dr. Krad’s property, apparently without discussing it with Dr. Krad. The final survey report, which contained a legal description of the larger piece of property, was delivered by the broker to Dr. Krad at his office. The broker interrupted Dr. Krad while he was with a patient and asked him to sign the survey report so it could be recorded. Dr. Krad signed the report without reading it and without telling his attorney or asking his attorney to review the report, assuming that the report described the piece of property that was originally discussed.

Dr. Krad knew something was amiss when the construction equipment arrived and started site preparation outside the boundaries of the parcel he assumed he had leased to BP. Eventually, Dr. Krad sued BP, asking for additional compensation for the difference between the size of the parcel he thought he had leased and the size of the property actually described in the final survey report.

Dr. Krad lost at both the trial court level and in the Indiana Court of Appeals. As the Court of Appeals wrote,

Under Indiana law, a person is presumed to understand what he signs and cannot be released from a contract due to his failure to read it. . . . Mere neglect will not relieve a party of the terms of an agreement in the absence of some excuse for the neglect, such as fraud, trickery, misrepresentation, or breach of trust or confidence.

Although the court acknowledged that the final survey report was given to Dr. Krad “somewhat abruptly,” it found that neither BP nor the broker did anything fraudulent in getting Dr. Krad to sign it. He was free to accept it or to reject it. In addtion, the court pointed out that, without a legal description, the lease agreement was an unenforceable agreement to agree, and, if Dr. Krad had refused to sign the survey report, he could have walked away from the deal or he could have pressed BP for more money.
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Just what IS a limited liability company? Part 7. It’s a bundle of tax choices.

March 7, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[This is the last of a seven-part series of posts discussing the characteristics of limited liability companies and comparing them to the characteristics of corporations, general partnerships, and sole proprietorships. Here’s the entire list.

Part 1. Background on sole proprietorships.
Part 2. Background on partnerships.
Part 3. Background on corporations.
Part 4. LLCs are distinct legal entities, separate from their owners.
Part 5. A limited liability company’s owners are not liable for the LLC’s obligations.
Part 6. Options for an LLC’s management structure.
Part 7. Options for an LLC’s tax treatment.]

In prior posts, I’ve discussed several characteristics of LLCs. First, like corporations, LLCs are entities separate from their owners. Second, also like corporations, the owners are not liable for the obliigations of the LLC. Third, they offer choices of management structures: They can be managed directly by the owners, like sole proprietorships and many partnerships, or they can be managed by others who are selected by the owners, in much the same way that shareholders of a corporation elect directors to run the business. This last post of the series looks at the tax characteristics of LLCs.

Interestingly, LLCs do not have a specific category in the Internal Revenue Code or the Tax Regulations. Instead, their tax treatment is governed by the so-called “check-the-box regulation.” It provides that the LLC may elect to be treated in one of several ways, and the choices depend on whether the LLC has one member or more than one member.

The default status for a single-member LLC is that it is a “disregarded entity” in that all the income and expenses go directly on the member’s personal tax return, just like a sole proprietorship. The LLC itself doesn’t even have to file a tax return. The default status for a multi-member LLC is to be taxed as if it were a partnership. Alternatively, either a single-member LLC or a multi-member LLC can elect to be taxed as if it were a corporation, either as a Subchapter C corporation or, if the LLC meets certain criteria, as a Subchapter S corporation. To decide which is the best tax strategy for your LLC, you should consult both your lawyer and your accountant.
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