Under New Jersey law, parties who hire independent contractor are not responsible for harm that occurs to the contractor’s employees as a result of the very work that the employee was hired to perform. In September 2022, the Court of Appeals of Maryland applied principles similar to the law of New Jersey in the context of a wrongful death action brought against, among others, the City of Baltimore after an employee of an independent contractor hired by the City was killed at the job site where he was working.
In Hancock v. Mayor of Baltimore, the City had retained an excavating company to repair a clog caused by a collapsed pipe. One of the contractor’s employees died when the trench in which he worked collapsed and he was buried under tons of dirt and debris. The family of the deceased employee sued, claiming that the city was negligent in hiring the independent excavating contractor, which had violated numerous laws, regulations and industry standards in connection with the performance of the excavation work. Two lower courts in Maryland as well as the Court of Appeals (which became the Supreme Court of Maryland in December 2022), however, ruled that Baltimore was not liable. The Court stated that “one who hires an independent contractor is not liable to an employee of that contractor for injuries caused by the contractor’s negligence in performing the work for which it was hired.”
The courts of New Jersey would likely have reached a similar decision if the case had...
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