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 Understanding the Borrowed Servant Doctrine
By: Matthew Shorr
Published: Crane Hot Line
Determining whether and with whom a special employment relationship exists can be critical to limiting liability for employers, such as crane and equipment rental companies, that loan out their employees to customers. More important than the employment agreement, is answering the question of who has the right to control an employee’s activities.
Under the workers’ compensation system, an employee may have two employers, a general employer and a special employer. A general employer is one that “lends” or “hires out” an employee to another entity or person for a period of time, such as when a crane or equipment rental company furnishes an operator to operate the rented equipment to work at the direction and control of the customer. The customer that borrows the employee from the crane or equipment rental company is known as the employee’s special employer.
The subcontractor (who supplies the equipment and/or “loans out”
an operator to the contractor that hires him or her) may enter into a
lease contract which includes an agreement concerning how the operating personnel will be treated for workers’ compensation purposes. In the event that an employee of the hiring contractor becomes injured on the job site, the injured worker would potentially be precluded from bringing suit against the “loan-out” employee and the crane or equipment rental company, under the Exclusive Remedy Rule of the workers’ compensation system.
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Clergy Abuse: Mediating an
American Tragedy
By: Rick Williams
Published: Daily Journal
 With deep-seated roots in contemporary Western civilization and religion, allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy have been in the public consciousness in many Western countries for decades. In 2004, the John Jay Report indicated that between 1950 and 2002, over 4,000 priests (approximately 4 percent of the then active priesthood) were accused of various forms of sexual misconduct and abuse. Because clergy abuse is so abhorrent to our innate moral sense and leaves such permanent and deep scars on its victims, the issues presented by such cases are unique, and potential solutions are sometimes enigmatic. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, major lawsuits in California and across the United States had been filed, with claims that priests had sexually abused minors and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church had consciously attempted to conceal this misconduct. In 2002, the California Legislature passed a law that suspended for one year the existing statute of limitations for the filing of clergy abuse actions. Prior to this 12-month window, suits in California had to be filed before the victim turned 26 or within three years after concluding that the abuse caused them to suffer psychological problems. This law and similar ones in other states opened the door for plaintiffs who were in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and older to file actions based on alleged abuse many decades earlier. |
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