Delaware: Indemnification Clause Can Only Be Used Against Negligent Employer

Following the minority rule utilized in Delaware, a state court held an employer was immune from a third-party indemnity claim filed against it by a landlord that had been sued by an injured worker in spite of the fact that the lease in question contained a strong indemnification clause whereby the employer agreed to indemnify and defend the landlord from any harm arising out of the lease arrangement. Noting that the landlord, and not the employer, was responsible for maintaining the nearby parking lot where the employee was injured, the court stressed that under prior court rulings, public policy dictated that the indemnity provision could not be used to push responsibility from the landlord to the tenant/employer where the latter had not been negligent.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the 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 Verbitski v. Diamond State Port Corp., 2019 Del. Super. LEXIS 163 (Apr. 4, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 121.04.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see