Pennsylvania: Injured Worker May Not Sue Borrowing Employer

An employee may have more than one employer, held a Pennsylvania appellate court. Accordingly, where a worker was hired by a firm that supplied temporary workers to other businesses and governmental entities and, after being assigned to a township, the worker sustained injuries in a work-related accident, he could not sue the township in tort to recover for its alleged negligence. The court adopted the "well-articulated and reasoned explanation of the Vermont Supreme Court which, in turn, had quoted Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the court said that to allow the injured worker recovery of workers’ compensation benefits against one employer—here the temporary staffing agency—and then a tort recovery against the borrowing employer—here the township—would thwart the underlying goals of the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act.

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 Nagle v. Trueblue, Inc., 2016 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 449 (Oct. 24, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 100.01.

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