Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, TORT CLAIMS—Mass. Sup. Ct.: Subcontractor’s employee can’t bring negligent hiring claim against general contractor after fall from roof, (Aug 19, 2026)

By Ronald Miller, J.D.

Massachusetts cases finding sufficient retained control typically rest on express contractual language assigning safety responsibility to the general contractor, concrete actions tied to those safety responsibilities, or both.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court affirmed a trial court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of a general contractor against the claims of a subcontractor’s employee for negligence and negligent hiring. The subcontractor’s employee suffered life-threatening injuries after a fall from a roof. The trial court concluded that the general contractor did not exercise any meaningful control over the subcontractor’s work, including the safety aspects of the work. The state high court agreed, concluding that nothing in the record would permit a jury to find that the general contractor retained or exercised control over the placement or adequacy of the safety lines, the use of harnesses, the training of the subcontractor’s workers on fall protection, or the manner in which the subcontractor performed the roofing work (Suquilanda v. Skyway Roofing, Inc., No. SJC-13878 (Mass. Sup. Ct. Aug. 17, 2026)).

Roofing contract. In September 2021, Skyway Roofing, a New York roofing company, contracted with a resort to remove and replace the shingles on a roof at its property. Skyway then subcontracted the work to MBT Construction. The subcontract required MBT to perform all work for the project under the employer’s general direction but left to MBT the means and methods of doing so. The subcontract was silent about safety and did not specify who was responsible for providing safety equipment, oversight, or training.

Skyway and MBT had a long working relationship and on each roofing job MBT supplied its own fall protection equipment. Neither company trained MBT’s workers in fall protection. On other jobs for other companies, MBT had been issued citations from OSHA for fall protection violations.

While replacing shingles on a roof, the plaintiff, an employee of MBT, fell and suffered life-threatening injuries. Specifically, the employee was moving a stack of shingles on the roof when his safety line proved too short to complete the move. He unclipped his harness from that safety line intending to connect to another. Before he could reattach his harness, he slipped and fell from the roof.

Negligence claims. The employee sued Skyway in state court asserting a common-law negligence claim, alleging that the company had failed to plan, supervise, and enforce safety procedures at the worksite. The employee also asserted a negligent hiring claim, alleging that Skyway had hired MBT knowing, or having reason to know, that MBT had previously failed to maintain safe worksites, particularly with respect to fall protection.

Skyway moved for summary judgment arguing that it had not retained sufficient control over MBT’s work to be liable, and that Massachusetts law does not recognize a negligent hiring claim brought by a subcontractor’s employee against a general contractor.

The trial court granted the motion, concluding that Skyway did not owe the employee a duty of care because it did not “retain the rights to control any aspect of MBT’s work.” Further, concluded the trial court, as the employee of the allegedly negligent subcontractor, the employee could not maintain a negligent hiring claim.

Duty of reasonable care. Negligence claims require the plaintiff to “prove that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of reasonable care, that the defendant breached this duty, that damage resulted, and that there was a causal relation between the breach of the duty and the damage.”

In Corsetti v. Stone Co., 396 Mass. 1, 10 (1985), the Massachusetts high court held that where a general contractor “retains the right to control the work in any of its aspects, including the right to initiate and maintain safety measures and programs,” the general contractor is liable for damages caused by its failure to exercise that control with reasonable care.

Here, the trial court concluded that Skyway did not “exercise any meaningful control over MBT’s work, including the safety aspects of the work.” Skyway’s involvement was limited to delivering roof shingles, a boom lift, and a dumpster, none of which contributed to the fall, and to visiting the site briefly on two occasions before the accident.

Retained control. Massachusetts cases finding sufficient retained control typically rest on express contractual language assigning safety responsibility to the general contractor, concrete actions tied to those safety responsibilities, or both. The cases falling short of retained control share an opposite feature: contractual language that either places safety responsibility on the independent contractor rather than the party who hired the contractor, or that gives the hiring party only “a general right to order the work stopped or resumed, to inspect its progress or to receive reports, to make suggestions or recommendations which need not necessarily be followed, or to prescribe alterations and deviations.”

The employee pointed to a single sentence in the contract requiring Skyway to “[m]aintain the premises in a safe, orderly and workmanlike manner.” That language, at most, established a “general duty to provide a reasonably safe worksite” and did not show that MBT lacked the freedom to work in its own way with respect to the specific actions at issue that caused the injury.

Nothing in the record would permit a jury to find that Skyway retained or exercised control over the placement or adequacy of the safety lines, the use of harnesses, the training of MBT workers on fall protection, or the manner in which MBT performed the roofing work.

Further, Skyway signing the building permit as the general contractor on the project did not establish that it took operational control over MBT’s work practices or safety measures sufficient to create a duty and did not supply sufficient evidence of retained control.

Accordingly, on this record, no genuine dispute of material fact existed as to a duty of care under a theory of retained control.

Negligent hiring. The employee next argued that the trial court erred by granting summary judgment in favor of Skyway on his negligent hiring claim. His theory was that Skyway chose MBT to perform the roofing work knowing, or having reason to know, that MBT had a record of failing to maintain safe worksites, in particular with respect to inadequate fall protection.

Although the court acknowledged that there was evidence that Skyway was aware that MBT was issued OSHA citations for fall protection violations on prior jobs, it nevertheless held that Skyway owed no independent negligent hiring duty to the employee. Where the employee is the subcontractor’s own employee, the general contractor neither retained nor exercised control over the injury-producing condition, and the injury arises from the subcontractor’s performance of its own work, Massachusetts law does not recognize an independent negligent hiring claim against the general contractor.

Whether a duty exists is a question of law informed by foreseeability, the relationship of the parties, existing social values, and public policy. Negligent hiring cases ordinarily involve injuries to members of the public, patients, customers, or others exposed to the tortfeasor because of the defendant's hiring or retention decision.

In this case, the employee’s exposure to MBT did not flow from Skyway’s hiring decision. MBT, not Skyway, hired the employee, directed his day-to-day work, supplied the fall protection equipment, and controlled the manner in which that equipment was used. Moreover, the employee was not left without a remedy for his injuries. He filed a workers’ compensation claim through MBT’s insurer.

Accordingly, the Massachusetts Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of the general contractor.

The case is No. SJC-13878.

Judge: Georges, S.

Attorneys: Thomas M. Bond (The Kaplan/Bond Group) for Luis Contento Suquilanda. Masha G. Hansford (Davis Polk & Wardwell) for Skyway Roofing, Inc.

Companies: Skyway Roofing, Inc.

Cases: TortClaims StateLawClaims Safety MassachusettsNews GCNNews