The Unrelated Works Exception to Workers’ Compensation Immunity

This is a legal case where a student sued their school for not providing accommodations for their disability. The court ruled in favor of the student and said the school had to make changes to help them. In Florida, if an employee gets hurt on the job, they can’t sue their employer for negligence. But if a fellow employee causes the injury, the injured employee may be able to sue them. However, there are exceptions to this rule. The law says that the injured employee can sue the co-worker if the co-worker acted really, really recklessly, or if the two employees are assigned to completely different jobs. The courts have looked at this second exception in many different cases and they usually decide if the employees are part of the same team or working on the same project. For example, in one case, a laborer and a welder who were working on the same construction project were considered to not be on “unrelated works” and the injured employee couldn’t sue the co-worker. In a few cases, the courts said that the “unrelated works exception” to workers’ compensation doesn’t apply. In one case, two employees who did different jobs at a hospital were still considered to be doing the same kind of work. In another case, two employees at a chemical plant were also considered to be doing related work, even though they had different jobs. In these cases, different employees at schools got injured and sued the school board. The courts said that even if the employees had different jobs, they were still doing work related to education and school services, so they couldn’t sue for negligence. The courts decided that the employees were doing related work, so they couldn’t sue the school board. The “bright line” test is a way of determining if co-employees are assigned to unrelated work. It looks at whether the employees work in the same location and serve the same business purpose. In the Lopez case, the court ruled that the plaintiff and the defendants were not assigned to unrelated work because they worked in different locations and had different job purposes. Later cases also applied both the “case-by-case” and “bright line” approaches, but the results were the same. For example, in the Victorin case, the court found that two school bus drivers were assigned to related work because they both drove buses for the school board and their job was to transport schoolchildren. In the first case, two county employees were in an accident but were assigned to different jobs in different locations, so their injuries were not considered related to their work. In the second case, a nurse was injured at the hospital where she worked, and the court decided that her injury was related to her job because it was part of the hospital’s mission to treat patients. The Florida Supreme Court decided that the exception for unrelated works should be interpreted narrowly, meaning that workplace injuries should be compensated regardless of fault. The Supreme Court agreed with the trial court that in the Taylor case, the bus attendant and mechanics were working together for the common goal of providing safe transportation for school children, so they were not engaged in unrelated works. The court also disagreed with the decision in the Lopez case. The court said that the decision in Taylor follows the intent of the Florida Workers’ Compensation Law and that giving exceptions to workers’ compensation immunity would go against the purpose of the law. The court didn’t provide a specific method for applying the unrelated works exception and didn’t comment on other cases. Justice Lewis agreed with the decision in Taylor but disagreed with saying that Lopez was wrongly decided. He criticized the majority for not providing guidance for lower courts in applying the unrelated works exception. The concurring opinion in the Taylor case discussed different tests for determining if employees are engaged in unrelated works and suggested a new approach. The majority opinion reinforced a narrow interpretation of the exception, making it harder to apply. The courts have struggled to figure out the purpose of the exception and why it should determine employee immunity. Without a clear reason for using factors like work locations and assigned duties, courts will continue to struggle with this exception.

Source: https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/the-unrelated-works-exception-to-workers-compensation-immunity/