Solis v. Clean Harbors, Inc.

Background

Abraham Solis was a temporary contract employee hired by Aerotek, Inc. and assigned to Clean Harbors Industrial Services, Inc. as a Field Technician. On the first day of the assignment, January 15, 2019, Solis reported to Clean Harbors’s Benicia facility for training. Because the training was not ready, Clean Harbors personnel directed him to work in a maintenance area. Later that day, while helping Clean Harbors employees work on a centrifuge machine, Solis’s right thumb was crushed by machinery that fell from a forklift.

Solis filed a workers’ compensation claim with Aerotek and began receiving benefits three days after the accident. He later filed a negligence lawsuit against Aerotek and Clean Harbors seeking additional recovery for the same injury. The defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that California’s Workers’ Compensation Act made workers’ compensation Solis’s exclusive remedy.

Special-employer relationship

The court explained that California workers’ compensation law may recognize two employers: a general employer, such as the staffing agency, and a special employer, such as the business receiving and directing the worker. When a dual-employment relationship exists, the workers’ compensation remedy generally applies against both employers.

The court held that Clean Harbors was Solis’s special employer. The agreement between Aerotek and Clean Harbors gave Clean Harbors responsibility to control, manage, and supervise contract employees’ work and allowed Clean Harbors to terminate an assignment. The undisputed evidence also showed that Clean Harbors personnel solely supervised and directed Solis at the Benicia facility, assigned him tasks, supplied the equipment and facility, and directed his actions immediately before the accident. The court found that the actual working relationship, rather than the employment labels in the agreements, controlled.

The court therefore concluded that Solis was jointly employed by Aerotek as his general employer and Clean Harbors as his special employer for workers’ compensation purposes. Solis’s belief that he worked only for Aerotek did not create a factual dispute because the special-employer inquiry was objective.

Injury within the scope of employment

The court also held that Solis’s injury arose out of and occurred during his employment. Solis argued that maintenance work was outside his Field Technician job description. The court rejected that argument, reasoning that the work was requested by Clean Harbors employees, took place at Clean Harbors’s facility during working hours, involved Clean Harbors’s machinery, and benefited Clean Harbors’s business. The court stated that workers’ compensation coverage is not limited to injuries suffered while performing only the employee’s usual duties.

The court also rejected Solis’s argument that emotional distress related to the workplace injury fell outside workers’ compensation exclusivity. It found no evidence that the circumstances fit an exception for intentional misconduct or conduct unrelated to the employer-employee relationship.

Disposition

The court held that California’s workers’ compensation exclusive-remedy rule barred Solis’s tort claims against both Clean Harbors and Aerotek. It granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and stated that Aerotek and Clean Harbors were entitled to judgment as a matter of law on Solis’s negligence claim. A separate judgment was to issue.