Florida: Making an About-Face, Court Says Electric Co. Was Immune Contractor

Reversing itself, Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal held that a public utility’s obligation to maintain its equipment and facilities was the sort of activity that could be subcontracted to another firm and that when it had properly done so, the public utility was immune from liability as a statutory employer for work-related injuries sustained by the subcontractor’s employees. In October 2020, the Second DCA had come to the opposite conclusion [see 2020 Fla. App. LEXIS 14601, 45 Fla. L. Weekly D 2358]. Upon reconsideration, the Court said that a public utility’s status as a statutory employer was not defeated by the special Florida law that required public utilities to operate the “equipment used in connection with the production, transmission, distribution, regulation, and delivery of electricity to any customer” in a manner that was “safe, efficient, and proper” [see Fla. Admin. Code R. 25-6.037(1)].

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law(LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Tampa Elec. Co. v. Gansner, 2021 Fla. App. LEXIS 14640 (2d DCA, Nov. 10, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 70.01.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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