North Carolina: Injured Construction Worker Was Independent Contractor, Not Employee

The North Carolina Industrial Commission did not err in concluding that plaintiff (“Bentley”) was an independent contractor—and not an employee—of a construction company where it appeared, in relevant part, that Bentley held himself out as the owner and operator of his own construction company, distributed business cards indicating that “Bentley Construction” was engaged in providing various construction services, maintained a website under his business name, provided most of the tools required to perform the services, engaged in hiring his own crew, set his and his crew’s hours, was not subject to any significant degree of supervision, and was generally responsible only for the finished product—construction framing. The Court added that while Bentley was paid by the hour—ordinarily a characteristic of actual employment—that factor was not determinative.

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.

See Bentley v. Jonathan Piner Constr., 2017 N.C. App. LEXIS 561 (July 18, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 61.04.

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