Background
Ramiro Godinez died after falling more than 20 feet at a Waukegan hotel construction site on his first day there. His estate sued Stone Development Group, Inc. (SDG), alleging negligence in the management and supervision of the site. SDG had commercial general liability and excess policies issued by Mt. Hawley Insurance Company.
Mt. Hawley brought this declaratory action, asserting that it owed no indemnity because Godinez was SDG’s employee and the policies excluded bodily-injury claims arising from an insured’s employment relationship. After the wrongful-death case settled, the parties continued litigating whether the exclusion applied. Following a bench trial, the Cook County circuit court found that Godinez was SDG’s employee and that Mt. Hawley had no duty to indemnify SDG.
The Court’s Holding
The appellate court affirmed. The policies’ partial definition of “employee”—including leased workers but excluding temporary workers—did not make the term ambiguous. The court properly applied the ordinary meaning of employee: a person working under an express or implied contract of hire where the employer has the right to control the work.
The trial court’s finding that Godinez was an SDG employee was not against the manifest weight of the evidence. Stone arranged for Godinez to come to the site, secured site access, had an SDG foreman direct Godinez and another worker to the work area, and repeatedly identified Godinez as an SDG employee to OSHA. The appellate court also found no abuse of discretion in admitting the OSHA report or Becerra’s OSHA statement.
Key Takeaways
- An employee exclusion can apply even where the worker had not completed paperwork, received training, or begun the specific carpentry work.
- “Employee” retained its ordinary meaning despite policy language addressing leased and temporary workers.
- Circumstantial evidence supported an implied employment relationship between SDG and Godinez.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that courts will evaluate the practical facts of a worker’s relationship with an insured when applying an employee-injury exclusion. An employer’s contemporaneous statements and site-level direction may carry substantial weight, particularly when later testimony conflicts with those statements.