Idaho: Skydiving Instructor's Body is not "Equipment" for Purposes of Determining Employment Relationship

Based on the record evidence, an Idaho skydiving instructor may have been an employee, not an independent contractor, held the state's Supreme Court. The Court said the matter should be remanded for a proper determination since the magistrate court committed error in indicating the instructor's body was "no less a piece of equipment than the airplane that took them up to the appropriate altitude." That the instructor used his body in performing the service did not mean the skydiver supplied important "equipment" to the job. The Court added that virtually every worker, no matter what his or her employment designation, used his or her body in some way in connection with the job. The Supreme Court acknowledged that the district court sought to soften the magistrate court's language, but that effort was to no avail in the case since the "equipment" rationale was an important component of the magistrate court's decision.

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 Idaho ex rel. Industrial Comm’n v. Skydown Skydiving, LLC, 2020 Ida. LEXIS 67 (Apr. 16, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 61.07.

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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