Illinois: In “Lent Worker” Scenario, Both Lender and Borrower May Utilize Exclusive Remedy Defense

An Illinois appellate court held that where a temporary staffing agency assigns or loans a worker to a borrowing company, both the “lender” and the “borrower” are immune from tort liability under the exclusive remedy provisions of the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act. Accordingly, where a lent employee was exclusively supervised by an employee of the borrowing firm, working the same hours as the regular employees of that borrowing firm, she could not sue it in tort following a work-related accident. The court stressed that there was evidence that the lending agency’s representatives had ever visited the injured worker’s work site. 

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 Torrijos v. International Paper Co., 2021 IL App (2d) 191150, 2021 Ill. App. LEXIS 321 (June 22, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 111.01.

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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