A divided Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a sales representative for a hardware company could not pursue a civil remedy from a retailer after he was injured at one of its stores.
Brian Coblentz worked as an outside sales representative for Stanley National Hardware. The job required him to visit various hardware stores in his region. In 2012, he visited a Tractor Supply store in Fayetteville, Tennessee, and suffered injuries when a 12-foot steel barn door track fell out of the Stanley National display and struck him on the head, according to Coblentz v. Tractor Supply Co.
After receiving workers compensation benefits from Stanley National, Mr. Coblentz sued Tractor Supply Co., claiming the store had negligently installed or maintained the display and failed to warn him of the danger. Moving for summary judgment, Tractor Supply said the case was subject to exclusive remedy. A trial court agreed.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals said that workers comp immunity can be extended to “statutory employers” through a contractor/subcontractor relationship. Generally, a company is considered a contractor if the work “being performed by a subcontractor’s employees is part of the regular business of the company or is the same type of work usually performed by the company’s employees,” the court said.
Because Mr. Coblentz visited Tractor Supply’s store frequently, “(w)e consider the frequency of Mr. Coblentz’s visits to be consistent with the type of services he performed at the Tractor Supply Store and one indicator that the services were part of Tractor Supply’s regular business,” the court wrote.
One judge dissented, arguing that “vendor-vendee relationships have not been fully grappled with in Tennessee case law” in a statutory employer context.
WorkCompCentral is a sister publication of Business Insurance. More stories here.