Chapter 12 - § 12.6 • WORKERS' COMPENSATION IMMUNITY

• Jurisdiction: Colorado

§ 12.6 • WORKERS' COMPENSATION IMMUNITY

The Workers' Compensation Act of Colorado⁴⁹ provides the exclusive remedy for an employee who is injured on the job.⁵⁰ Employees are provided with workers' compensation insurance coverage from their employers without regard to fault, and in exchange waive their common law remedies against employers.⁵¹ Upstream contractors are considered statutory employers, and are thus generally also immune from suit.⁵² Similarly, landowners are generally protected from suit.⁵³

Unless a manufacturer falls within one of the above categories, however, it is generally not immune from a lawsuit in which the plaintiff was covered by (or has received) workers' compensation insurance.⁵⁴ A special case arises, though, if the manufacturer is also the plaintiff's employer. In such a case, it is unlikely that a plaintiff can bring a viable lawsuit against his or her employer manufacturer.⁵⁵ The main Colorado case on this point is Shaw v. City of Colorado Springs.⁵⁶ In this case, the plaintiff was injured when he was run over by a truck assembled by his employer, the City of Colorado Springs. Although the court agreed the City of Colorado Springs was a manufacturer for the purposes of product liability law, it affirmed the trial court's dismissal of the plaintiff's claims in light of the workers' compensation statute.⁵⁷

The Colorado Court of Appeals discussed the dual-capacity doctrine, discussed below, in its decision in Shaw. The court ultimately decided it did not need to determine whether Colorado follows the dual-capacity doctrine because whether or not Colorado follows the doctrine, the plaintiff employee in the case was without a remedy.⁵⁸ Under the product liability dual-capacity doctrine, workers' compensation "immunity is waived only if the defendant is engaged in manufacturing the defective product for sale to the public and incidentally uses it in his own business."⁵⁹ The doctrine can only be applied (and thus immunity waived) if "the employer's principal business is the manufacture of the defective product."⁶⁰ On the other hand, workers' compensation immunity is maintained if the employer manufacturers a product for its own use, even if it "subsequently sells an extra product."⁶¹

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Notes:

^[49] C.R.S. §§ 8-40-101, et seq.

^[50] C.R.S. § 8-41-301; Triad Painting Co. v. Blair, 812 P.2d 638, 641 (Colo. 1991).

^[51] Finlay v. Storage Tech. Corp., 764 P.2d 62, 63 (Colo. 1988); Buzard v. Super Walls, Inc., 681 P.2d 520, 522 (Colo...