In a recent Daily Journal article, “Home Improvement: When There’s an Accident, Who’s at fault?,” partner Gary A. Watt analyzes the uncertain consequences facing a homeowner if an unlicensed contractor or that contractor’s employee, is injured during a remodeling project.

Much of this problem arises from Labor Code section 2750.5, which has mystifying yet apparently controlling language that appears to make homeowners the “employer” for purposes of tort liability and application of Cal-OSHA. Originally enacted to “prevent hirers from labeling employees as ‘contractors’ to avoid paying higher wages and benefits,” the Legislature probably never intended for section 2750.5 to apply to homeowners. Nevertheless, courts have found that “unlicensed contractors injured on the job are employees of the party that hired them, including homeowners” exposing homeowners liability that would otherwise be shielded by the Privette Doctrine.

The unresolved ambiguity of section 2750.5 leaves homeowners open to, as Justice Janice Rogers Brown aptly put it, “a panoply of obligations…with which they have little ability to comply.” (Fernandez v. Lawson (2003) 31 Cal.4th 31, 44.) Quoting Brown and lamenting the high court’s failure to resolve these issues in its recent Cortez v. Abich decision, Gary asserts that “the Court should take on section 2750.5, revisiting its legislative purpose and construing it’s ‘garbled syntax.’”

Gary frequently blogs about appellate issues at www.caappellatelaw.com.

This article was originally published in the Daily Journal and subscription-based Daily Journal website at www.dailyjournal.com.