The state Supreme Court has granted allocatur in a case that promises to have lasting effects on Pennsylvania’s statutory employer law, following a divided state Superior Court’s decision affirming a $1.5 million judgment entered in favor of an injured worker who was pinned under a scissor lift while repairing the ceiling of a Bucks County church.
In Patton v. Worthington Associates, a split three-judge panel extended tort liability to Worthington Associates Inc., a general contractor, declining to endorse the contractor’s theory that the controlling question whether the injured man was Worthington’s "statutory employee" or an "independent contractor" should have never gone to the trial jury.
