ALOK AHUJA, Judge.
Appellant Robert Shaw was injured while working on a construction project known as Zona Rosa Development II in Kansas City ("the Project"). Shaw was an employee of RLS Trucking; RLS was a subcontractor for Respondent Mega Industries Corp. After Shaw settled a workers' compensation claim for his injuries with RLS, he sued Mega Industries in the Circuit Court of Platte County. The circuit court entered summary judgment in favor of Mega Industries. It found that Mega Industries was Shaw's statutory employer, and that his common-law claims against Mega Industries were therefore barred by the exclusive-remedy provisions of the Workers' Compensation Law. Shaw appeals. We affirm.
At the time of his injuries, Shaw was employed by RLS, which is in the business of excavating and hauling materials such as gravel, dirt, and rock. Shaw is RLS' sole owner. RLS had been retained by Mega Industries as a subcontractor on the Project.
Shaw was injured at the Project site on September 7, 2007, when a telephone booth that was being moved by another RLS employee fell onto him. Shaw sustained multiple fractures of his feet and lower legs and, as a result, went through a number of surgical procedures, including the amputation of two toes.
Shaw filed a workers' compensation claim with the Division of Workers' Compensation against RLS and Mega Industries.
RLS and/or its workers' compensation insurer were the sole source of the settlement payment to Shaw; neither Mega Industries nor its insurer paid any compensation. On August 1, 2011, the Division of Workers' Compensation dismissed with prejudice what remained of Shaw's claim for compensation for failure to prosecute. The Order of Dismissal listed both RLS and Mega Industries as employers against whom Shaw's claim was asserted.
On February 4, 2011, following the settlement of his workers' compensation claim with RLS, Shaw filed suit against Mega Industries and one of its employees, Eric Bachman, in the Circuit Court of Platte County, contending that their negligence caused his injuries. On July 16, 2012, the circuit court granted Mega Industries summary judgment, finding that Mega Industries was Shaw's statutory employer, and therefore that the workers' compensation system constituted Shaw's exclusive remedy against Mega Industries. On July 25, 2012, Shaw dismissed his claims against Bachman without prejudice. This appeal followed.
"Appellate review of summary judgment is de novo. The record is viewed in the light most favorable to the party against whom judgment was entered." Roberts v. BJC Health Sys., 391 S.W.3d 433, 437 (Mo. banc 2013), citing ITT Commercial Fin. Corp. v. Mid-Am. Marine Supply Corp., 854 S.W.2d 371, 376 (Mo. banc 1993).
Although Shaw's Brief contains three separate Points Relied On, his Points are interrelated, and boil down to a single, fundamental issue: was Shaw's sole remedy against Mega Industries under the Workers' Compensation Law (the "Act"), even though Mega Industries paid no portion of the workers' compensation benefits Shaw received?
The resolution of this issue depends on the interaction of multiple provisions of the Act. First, § 287.120 specifies that, at least as a general proposition, the workers' compensation system provides workers with their exclusive remedy against their employers for workplace injuries. At the time of Shaw's injury, the statute provided:
§ 287.120, RSMo Cum.Supp.2011.
The Act also provides that, at least in certain circumstances, a contractor will be deemed to be the employer of its subcontractors' employees, although the statutory employer's liability for workers' compensation benefits is secondary to the immediate employer's liability, and is extinguished if
§ 287.040.
We interpret these statutory provisions by applying well-established canons of statutory construction.
State ex rel. KCP & L Greater Mo. Operations Co. v. Cook, 353 S.W.3d 14, 17-18 (Mo.App.W.D.2011) (en banc) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
Shaw recognizes that Mega Industries qualified as his statutory employer because of its contractor-subcontractor relationship with his immediate employer (RLS Trucking). He emphasizes, however, that Mega Industries faced no liability for his workers' compensation claim due to the final sentence of § 287.040.3, which specifies that "[n]o such [remote] employer shall be liable as in this section provided, if the employee was insured by his immediate or any intermediate employer." Shaw also emphasizes that § 287.120.1, which provides that the workers' compensation system constitutes a worker's exclusive remedy against his employer for injuries caused by workplace accidents, opens by specifying that "[e]very employer subject to the provisions of this chapter shall be liable, irrespective of negligence, to furnish compensation under the provisions of this chapter." Relying on the final sentence of § 287.040.3, and the opening clause of § 287.120.1, Shaw argues that "a contractor is only entitled to immunity [from common-law actions] if it is liable under the Act for benefits." Br. at 11.
The Missouri Supreme Court rejected this precise argument in Bunner v. Patti,
Id. at 155.
Bunner rejected the employee's argument that § 287.040.3, and its last sentence in particular, stripped the statutory employer of its immunity from civil suits:
Id. at 156-57 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
Bunner noted that adoption of the employee's argument would lead to anomalous results. The Court observed that "the object of the [statutory employment doctrine] is to prevent the remote employer
Finally, Bunner emphasized that, if the statutory employer were subject to liability in a civil action after the injured worker's immediate employer had paid workers' compensation benefits, the immediate employer would be subrogated to the employee's claim against the statutory employer; this would have the effect of making the statutory employer primarily liable for the worker's injury, contrary to the liability scheme established by § 287.040.3:
Id.
The Court reaffirmed the Bunner decision in Anderson v. Steurer, 391 S.W.2d 839 (Mo.1965), in which an injured worker had again obtained workers' compensation benefits from his immediate employer, but then filed a common-law action against a more remote employer. Id. at 841. Anderson sets forth the reasoning of Bunner at length, including Bunner's treatment of the last sentence of what is now § 287.040.3, and closes by explicitly stating that "[w]e reaffirm the views expressed in the Bunner case." Id. at 846. The Supreme Court adhered to the principles established by Bunner and Anderson in State ex rel. MSX Int'l, Inc. v. Dolan, 38 S.W.3d 427, 429-30 (Mo. banc 2001); Vatterott v. Hammerts Iron Works, Inc., 968 S.W.2d 120, 121-22 (Mo. banc 1998); Bailey v. Morrison-Knudsen Co., 411 S.W.2d 178, 180-81 (Mo.1967); and Thompson v. Kroeger, 380 S.W.2d 339, 342-43 (Mo. 1964).
Shaw contends that we are no longer bound by this precedent, because in 2005 the legislature amended the Act and added language specifying that "reviewing courts shall construe the provisions of this chapter strictly." § 287.800.1. By contrast, at the time of Bunner and the cases following it, the Act provided that "[a]ll of the provisions of this chapter shall be liberally construed with a view to the public welfare." § 287.800, RSMo 2000. As this Court has previously noted:
Robinson v. Hooker, 323 S.W.3d 418, 423 (Mo.App.W.D.2010) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted); see also State ex rel. KCP & L, 353 S.W.3d at 20.
Shaw argues that the transition from a liberal to a strict construction of the Workers' Compensation Law renders Bunner obsolete. The Missouri Supreme Court rejected this argument in MSX, however. As noted above, in MSX — as here — an injured employee first obtained workers' compensation benefits against his immediate employer, and then sued a more remote statutory employer to recover additional common-law compensation. The injured worker in MSX made precisely the same argument, based on the final sentence of what is now § 287.040.3, that Shaw makes here (and that was rejected in Bunner): that the final sentence "negat[ed] [the remote employer's] affirmative defense of being a statutory employer because ... [the employee's] immediate employer[ ] provided the worker's compensation benefits." 38 S.W.3d at 429. MSX rejected this argument, and held — consistent with Bunner — that a statutory employer was immune from common-law actions, even if the statutory employer faced no liability for workers' compensation benefits because the injured worker was insured by his immediate employer. Moreover, MSX explicitly stated that this holding was not dependent on the rule of liberal construction:
Id. at 430; see also Thornsberry v. Thornsberry Invs., Inc., 295 S.W.3d 583 (Mo.App.S.D.2009) (applying Bunner and Anderson in case involving post-2005 injury; noting that § 287.040.3 determines the order of liability for worker's injury, and holding that immediate employer could not recover indemnification from more remote statutory employer).
Even if we were not bound by the pre-2005 decisions, we would reach the same result based on the plain wording of the relevant statutory provisions. Under § 287.040.2, Mega Industries was plainly Shaw's statutory employer. Further, while Mega Industries faced no liability to pay Shaw worker's compensation benefits under the final sentence of § 287.040.3 because Shaw's immediate employer carried workers' compensation insurance, this does not alter the fact that Mega Industries "shall be deemed to be the employer of" Shaw by operation of § 287.040.2. Section 287.120.1 specifies that Mega Industries — as Shaw's "employer" — "shall be released from all other liability [for personal injury
Shaw argues that application of the exclusive-remedy provision in § 287.120.1 presumes that the employer entitled to immunity "shall be liable, irrespective of negligence, to furnish compensation [to the employee] under the provisions of this chapter." Because Mega Industries faces no workers' compensation liability to Shaw in this case, he argues that the immunity granted by § 287.120.1 is inapplicable here. But Mega Industries was subject to liability "to furnish compensation under the provisions of" the Act. The Act merely provides Mega Industries with a defense to liability in the specific circumstances of this case, because Shaw's immediate employer was insured.
The immunity provided by § 287.120 has never been interpreted to require that the injured worker actually receive workers' compensation benefits from the employer. On the contrary, "if an `injury' comes within the definition of the term `accident' as defined in section 287.020.2, then it is included within the exclusivity provisions of the act, and recovery can be had, if at all, only under the terms set out in the act." Mo. Alliance for Retired Ams. v. Dep't of Labor & Indus. Relations, 277 S.W.3d 670, 679 (Mo. banc 2009) (plurality opinion) (emphasis added). For example, prior decisions have held that civil lawsuits for the death of a worker were precluded by the exclusivity provisions of §§ 287.120.1 and .2, even where the Act did not require the payment of compensation because the deceased worker did not have dependents entitled to prosecute a workers' compensation death-benefits claim. Page v. Clark Ref. & Mktg., Inc., 3 S.W.3d 385, 387-88 (Mo.App. E.D.1999); Combs v. City of Maryville, 609 S.W.2d 475, 476-78 (Mo.App.W.D. 1980). Those courts held that a remedy was "provided for" in the Act, § 287.120.2, even though the workers' compensation remedy was not available in the circumstances of a particular case.
There are many reasons why an employee may fail to recover worker's compensation benefits from his employer for an accidental workplace injury: a worker's evidence may fail to persuade the trier of fact; or an employer may successfully invoke a defense to liability (such as the untimely filing of a claim). But an employee's failure to prove up a winning workers' compensation claim does not make the employer liable for common-law damages. Instead, the Act's exclusivity provisions are only inapplicable with respect to "those employments specifically excluded from coverage under the Act [], those where the employee sustains a non-accidental injury on the job, or those where the injury was suffered while not engaged in the course of [the worker's] employment, or the like." Combs, 609 S.W.2d at 478; see also Mo. Alliance for Retired Ams., 277 S.W.3d at 679 (plurality opinion) ("If the `injury' is one that is not included within the term `accident' as defined in the act, however, then under section 287.120.1 an employer shall not be liable to the employee under the act and the injury, therefore, is not subject to the exclusivity provisions of the act...."). The fact that Mega Industries was not
Finally, we note that Shaw's reliance on Robinson v. Hooker, 323 S.W.3d 418 (Mo. App.W.D.2010), is misplaced. In Robinson we held that the Act did not grant immunity to an injured worker's co-employees, because those co-employees did not meet the statutory definition of an "employer."
We affirm the circuit court's judgment, which granted summary judgment to Respondent Mega Industries Corp.
All concur.
