Mississippi: General Contractor Waives Exclusive Remedy Defense by Waiting 26 Months Before Filing Summary Judgment Motion

The Supreme Court of Mississippi held that a general contractor waived its right to utilize the exclusive remedy defense where it was sued by the survivors of a worker employed by a subcontractor and for 26 months, it actively participated in litigating the merits of the case by joining various motions filed by codefendants, designating experts it planned to call at trial, and actively participating in numerous depositions. The Court reasoned that while the contractor’s Answer did indeed raise the exclusive remedy defense, it did not bring the matter to the court’s attention via a motion for more than two years. The Court added that the record suggested no extreme and unusual circumstances justifying the delay in bringing the defense to the court’s attention and requesting a hearing.

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

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Hanco Corp. v. Goldman, 2015 Miss. LEXIS 467 (Sept. 17, 2015) [2015 Miss. LEXIS 467 (Sept. 17, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 100.01 [100.01]

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

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