Background
Luis Contento Suquilanda suffered catastrophic injuries after falling from a roof at Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort in Hancock. Skyway Roofing, Inc. had contracted with the resort to replace the roof and was named as the general contractor on the building permit. Skyway then subcontracted the roofing work to MBT Construction Corp., Suquilanda’s employer. The subcontract put the work under Skyway’s general direction, but left the means and methods to MBT and said nothing about responsibility for safety equipment, training, or oversight.
MBT supplied the fall-protection equipment on this and dozens of other Skyway projects. On the day of the accident, Suquilanda unclipped from a safety line that was too short so he could connect to another line while moving shingles. He slipped before reconnecting. Although MBT had received earlier federal workplace-safety citations for fall-protection violations, the record showed that Skyway’s involvement at Jiminy Peak was largely limited to delivering materials and equipment and making two brief site visits. Skyway did not direct placement of safety lines, use of harnesses, worker training, or the manner of roofing work.
Suquilanda sued Skyway for common-law negligence and negligent hiring. A Superior Court judge entered summary judgment for Skyway, concluding that it had not retained control over MBT’s work and owed no separate negligent-hiring duty to MBT’s own employee. The Supreme Judicial Court transferred the appeal on its own initiative and affirmed.
The Court’s Holding
The SJC held first that Skyway did not owe Suquilanda a duty under Massachusetts’s retained-control rule. Under Corsetti v. Stone Co., a general contractor that retains control over part of an independent contractor’s work, including safety measures, must exercise that control reasonably. A jury usually decides whether control was retained, but summary judgment remains appropriate when the record could not support such a finding. Here, contractual language requiring Skyway to maintain a safe and orderly site and giving it “general direction” over MBT was not enough. The decisive question was control over the injury-producing safety practices, and the evidence showed that MBT chose and managed those practices itself.
The State Building Code did not change the result. Although the code requires a general contractor to execute and control construction methods safely, the court explained that a statute or regulation may inform whether an existing common-law duty was breached; it cannot create a tort duty where none otherwise exists. Nor did Skyway’s identification as general contractor on the permit establish operational control over MBT’s fall-protection system.
The court also announced a narrower but important rule for negligent hiring. When an injured plaintiff is the subcontractor’s own employee, the general contractor neither retained nor exercised control over the condition that produced the injury, and the injury arose from the subcontractor’s performance of its work, Massachusetts common law recognizes no independent negligent-hiring duty running from the general contractor to that employee. The SJC did not broadly decide whether to adopt section 411 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts or whether a contractor’s employee can ever qualify as a protected third person under it.
Key Takeaways
- General contractual supervision, a right to inspect or stop work, and responsibility for a safe site do not by themselves establish retained control. Liability turns on authority over the particular means, methods, or safety practice connected to the injury.
- A building permit and State Building Code obligations cannot independently manufacture a common-law duty. They may supply evidence of breach only after a duty has been established on another basis.
- A subcontractor’s employee cannot use negligent hiring to reach a general contractor on these facts, even when the general contractor allegedly knew of the subcontractor’s earlier safety violations.
- The decision leaves room for a different outcome where a general contractor expressly assumes safety responsibilities, actively enforces them, or controls the injury-producing condition.
Why It Matters
Suquilanda gives Massachusetts construction litigators a sharper boundary for jobsite-injury claims. Labels such as “general contractor,” broad safety promises, and permit filings will not substitute for proof that the defendant actually retained authority over the safety practice that caused the harm. Plaintiffs will need targeted evidence from contracts, site protocols, testimony, and the contractor’s conduct; defendants will focus discovery on who selected equipment, trained workers, and directed day-to-day work.
The negligent-hiring ruling also protects the allocation of risk embodied in workers’ compensation. The court reasoned that allowing the claim could route liability back to the subcontractor through an indemnity clause, effectively exposing the employer twice despite workers’ compensation exclusivity. The opinion therefore matters not only to contractors, but also to insurers drafting additional-insured and indemnity provisions and to counsel evaluating whether a workplace injury supports a viable third-party action.