When Can an Injured Worker Sue the General Contractor? The SJC Answers in Suquilanda v. Skyway Roofing

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly asked several attorneys what Suquilanda v. Skyway Roofing means for injured workers. Dunn & Phillips attorney Wayne Peereboom was among them.

The Short of It

On August 17, 2026, the Supreme Judicial Court decided Suquilanda v. Skyway Roofing, Inc., 498 Mass. 164 (2026). A roofer employed by a subcontractor fell from a resort roof and sued the general contractor. The Court held two things.

First, the general contractor owed him no duty under Corsetti v. Stone Co. because nothing in the record showed it retained or exercised control over the safety practices that caused the fall. A contract clause requiring a safe worksite, a "general direction" clause, and a building permit naming the company as general contractor did not add up to retained control. This holding applies the rule Massachusetts courts have used since 1985. It did not change the rule.

Second, and this is the new part, Massachusetts law does not recognize an independent negligent hiring claim by a subcontractor's own employee against the general contractor, at least where the general contractor did not control the injury-producing condition and the injury arose from the subcontractor's own work. That question had been open. It is now closed on these facts.

Wayne Peereboom, who works out of our Westfield office, was among the attorneys Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly asked about the ruling. His comments appear in Lawyers Weekly on August 27, 2026.

Lawyers Weekly summarized Wayne's view in two parts: the ruling will force more scrutiny of potential cases before they are filed, and it will leave some injured workers without sufficient compensation. His quoted prediction appears below.

Representing injured construction workers takes time-intensive, fact-specific litigation. The lawyer has to work through overlapping regulations and a chain of contracts. Injured workers still have several avenues of recovery, and this decision shows which questions now decide whether those avenues stay open.

What happened on the roof

In September 2021, Skyway Roofing, Inc., a New York company, contracted with Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort to strip and replace the shingles on one of the resort's buildings in Hancock. Skyway pulled the building permit from the town. On the permit application, Skyway listed itself as general contractor and named one of its own employees as "Person Responsible for Construction" and "project manager."

Skyway then subcontracted the work to MBT Construction Corp. The subcontract required MBT to work under Skyway's "general direction" but left the means and methods to MBT. The subcontract said nothing about safety: nothing on who supplied fall protection, who supervised its use, or who trained the crew.

The two companies had worked together for years. Since 2020 alone, Skyway had subcontracted seventy-two roofing jobs to MBT. On every one, MBT brought its own fall protection gear. Neither company trained MBT's workers in fall protection. On other jobs for other companies, OSHA had cited MBT for fall protection violations.

MBT's crew started at Jiminy Peak in October 2021. They installed anchors and fifty-foot safety lines. MBT's owner told the crew to always use fall protection. Skyway delivered shingles, a boom lift, and a dumpster, and visited the site twice before the accident to point out which roof to replace, check on materials, and confirm the crew was not damaging the property.

On the day of the accident, Luis Contento Suquilanda was moving a stack of shingles across the roof when his safety line ran out before he reached his destination. He unclipped, intending to attach to a second line. Before he could reclip, he slipped and fell. First responders treated him at the scene and airlifted him to a hospital in New York. He filed a workers' compensation claim through MBT's insurer, administered by the New York State Workers' Compensation Board.

The lawsuit

Mr. Suquilanda sued Skyway in Berkshire Superior Court on February 9, 2023. Two of his claims matter here:

• Negligence. Skyway, as general contractor, failed to plan, supervise, and enforce safety procedures at the site.
• Negligent hiring. Skyway chose MBT knowing, or having reason to know, that MBT had a record of unsafe worksites and inadequate fall protection.

He also pleaded strict liability under New York Labor Law § 240, the scaffold law, which puts fall protection on owners and contractors without regard to fault. The Superior Court ruled that Massachusetts law governed and entered summary judgment on that count. He did not appeal that ruling, so the SJC never reached it.

Skyway moved for summary judgment. It argued it never retained enough control over MBT's work to owe Mr. Suquilanda a duty, and that Massachusetts does not recognize a negligent hiring claim by a subcontractor's own employee against the general contractor. Superior Court Judge Maureen B. Hogan agreed on both points. Mr. Suquilanda appealed, and the SJC transferred the case on its own motion, bypassing the Appeals Court. One procedural wrinkle: no judgment had entered in the Superior Court, so the appeal was technically premature. Skyway did not object, and the Court treated the appeal as if judgment had entered.

The Court heard argument April 8, 2026, and decided the case August 17, 2026. Justice Serge Georges Jr. wrote for a unanimous seven-justice court. The Court affirmed.

Holding: the court's answer to a legal question it had to resolve to decide the case. A holding binds later courts. Other statements in an opinion can persuade later courts but do not bind them.

Holding one: general responsibility is not retained control

Since 1985, the governing rule has come from Corsetti v. Stone Co., 396 Mass. 1 (1985). A general contractor that "retains the right to control the work in any of its aspects, including the right to initiate and maintain safety measures and programs" can be liable for injuries caused by its failure to exercise that control with reasonable care. Whether the general contractor retained control is ordinarily a jury question. When the record cannot support a finding of retained control, the judge decides it as a matter of law. Here, the Court found the record too thin to create a question of fact.

Corsetti drew on Restatement (Second) of Torts § 414 (1965), which subjects one who entrusts work to an independent contractor, but retains control of any part of the work, to liability for harm caused by failing to exercise that control with reasonable care. Comment c to that section asks whether the contractor kept the freedom to work in its own way. The Court applied that comment here.

Mr. Suquilanda pointed to three things.

A. The Jiminy Peak contract. The contract required Skyway to "[m]aintain the premises in a safe, orderly and workmanlike manner." The Court read that as, at most, a general duty to provide a reasonably safe worksite. It did not show that MBT lacked the freedom to work in its own way on the specific things that caused the fall: where the safety lines went, how long they were, whether harnesses were used, whether anyone trained the crew. On those points, the Court found nothing in the record a jury could use.

B. The subcontract's "general direction" clause. A general contractual right to direct the work does not by itself satisfy Corsetti. Citing Lyon v. Morphew, 424 Mass. 828 (1997), the Court repeated that a general right to direct and stop work, or to order correction of safety violations, falls short. The standard asks whether the general contractor kept control over safety practices on site.

C. The building permit and the State Building Code. Mr. Suquilanda argued that by naming itself general contractor on the permit, Skyway took on the code's requirement that a general contractor execute and control all means and methods of construction in a safe manner. See 780 Code Mass. Regs. § 107.6.3.1 (2024). The Court rejected the argument at its premise. Under Juliano v. Simpson, 461 Mass. 527 (2012), a duty of care must already exist before a statutory violation can support tort liability. A code provision can bear on breach where a common-law duty exists. It cannot create one. Signing a permit application as general contractor, the Court said, does not by itself show operational control over how a subcontractor installed anchors, placed lines, trained its workers, or moved materials.

What retained control looks like

The Court collected the cases where a plaintiff cleared the bar. Two of them turn on contract language backed by conduct.

In Corsetti, the general contract required the general contractor to "initiate, maintain, and supervise all safety precautions and programs," a site supervisor had authority to order subcontractors to fix violations and stop work, he actually checked the scaffolding, and he knew the crew was not wearing safety belts. In Dilaveris v. W.T. Rich Co., 424 Mass. 9 (1996), the general contract made the general contractor "solely responsible" for means and methods and for taking all proper precautions to protect persons from injury, and testimony confirmed that making sure subcontractors followed safety procedures fell to the general contractor. In both, the contract assigned safety to the general contractor and the general contractor acted on it.

What happens when the contract is silent

A contract is silent when it says nothing about a term. Two cases show that silence does not end the inquiry.

In Kelly v. Foxboro Realty Assocs., LLC, 454 Mass. 306 (2009), a stadium owner hired an independent contractor to run security, which included opening a gate. The owner stipulated that it established the protocol for how the gate was to be opened and secured in the open position. That stipulation went past a general right to order work stopped and supported a retained-control instruction to the jury. No safety clause did the work. The owner's admission about who set the procedure did.

The SJC used Ku v. Framingham, 53 Mass. App. Ct. 727 (2002), as its express contrast to Skyway. In Ku, town supervisors were out on the roads, supervising town employees and independent contractors alike, and they controlled the method by which operators plowed. The Appeals Court reversed summary judgment for the town and sent the case back for trial. That presence and control raised a triable question on retained control without a contract clause.

The cases that fall short share the opposite feature. Either the contract puts safety on the independent contractor, see Aulson v. Stone, 97 Mass. App. Ct. 702 (2020), or it gives the hiring party only a general right to stop or resume work, inspect progress, receive reports, make suggestions, or prescribe alterations, see McNamara v. Massachusetts Port Auth., 30 Mass. App. Ct. 716 (1991).

Skyway matched none of the first group. Delivering shingles, a boom lift, and a dumpster, then visiting twice to point at a roof and check on materials, looks like McNamara and Aulson, not Ku. The Court said so directly: none of the delivered items contributed to the fall.

Holding two: no negligent hiring claim for the subcontractor's own employee

This is the part of the opinion that decides a question Massachusetts courts had not squarely answered.

The record contained evidence that Skyway knew about MBT's prior OSHA fall protection citations. The Court took that evidence as true for summary judgment purposes and still held that Skyway owed Mr. Suquilanda no negligent hiring duty. The rule, as the Court stated it: where the plaintiff 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.

The Court reached that answer under ordinary duty principles and cited Hancock v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, 480 Md. 588 (2022), as a comparison. Maryland declined to recognize a duty running from the hiring party to the contractor's own employee for injuries arising out of the contractor's work. A footnote adds that California and Delaware courts rejecting these claims under Restatement § 411 raised many of the same practical concerns. Massachusetts now reaches the same result on its own reasoning.

Before giving its reasons, the Court restated what makes a duty. Whether one exists is a question of law informed by foreseeability, the relationship of the parties, existing social values, and public policy. See Jupin v. Kask, 447 Mass. 141, 146-151 (2006); Remy v. MacDonald, 440 Mass. 675, 677 (2004). Foreseeability alone does not create a duty. Skyway's knowledge of MBT's OSHA history made the risk foreseeable and still did not produce one.

The Court gave three reasons.

I. Who the duty protects. Massachusetts negligent hiring cases have involved members of the public, patients, and customers, people exposed to a dangerous person because of the defendant's hiring decision. Mr. Suquilanda's exposure to MBT did not flow from Skyway's hiring decision. MBT hired him, directed his work, supplied the fall protection, and controlled how the crew used it. Treating Skyway's selection of MBT as the source of a duty to MBT's own employees would, in the Court's words, collapse the line between protecting third parties from a contractor's negligence and protecting the contractor's own employees from risks inherent in the work.

II. Workers' compensation exclusivity. Mr. Suquilanda has a remedy: workers' compensation through MBT's insurer. Under G. L. c. 152, § 24 and its New York counterpart, employees receive no-fault benefits and give up common-law claims against their employer in exchange. Recognizing a duty here, the Court held, would put the common law in tension with that bargain.

III. The indemnification loop. The subcontract required MBT to indemnify Skyway for losses arising from MBT's work. Any recovery against Skyway for negligent hiring would run straight back to MBT, exposing MBT to liability to its own employee twice and circumventing the compensation scheme. The Court drew an analogy to Vertentes v. Barletta Co., 392 Mass. 165 (1984), which refused vicarious liability in the inherently-dangerous-work context for the same reason.

The Court closed by stating that reworking the allocation of responsibility among general contractors, subcontractors, workers, compensation insurers, and liability insurers is a broad policy question the Legislature is better equipped to resolve.

What the Court did not decide

The Court kept the scope tight, and the limits matter as much as the rule.

• It declined to decide whether to adopt Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411, which subjects an employer to liability for physical harm to "third persons" caused by a failure to use reasonable care in hiring a competent contractor, and left open whether "third persons" categorically excludes a contractor's employees.
• It resolved only the narrower question on these facts, where the general contractor did not retain or exercise control over the injury-producing condition. A general contractor that did control that condition faces a different case.
• Because the plaintiff failed on duty, the Court never reached breach, causation, or comparative negligence. The fact that Mr. Suquilanda unclipped from his line played no role in the decision.
• The plaintiff did not argue that the condition of the worksite itself caused his injury, so the opinion says nothing about premises liability claims.
• The plaintiff did not appeal the choice-of-law ruling, so the opinion says nothing about when New York law might govern an out-of-state crew injured in Massachusetts.

Who weighed in

The case drew amicus briefs, submissions to the court by nonparties, on both sides.

Supporting the injured worker: the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys, the Massachusetts Worker Centers, and the Suffolk University Law School Supreme Court Clinic.

Supporting Skyway: the Pioneer New England Legal Foundation, the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Insurance Federation, and the American Tort Reform Association.

The lineup shows the stakes. The insurance industry treated this as a case about closing a door. The trial bar treated it as a case about keeping one open.

Why the Court ruled for Skyway

The reasoning that carried the decision is not a technicality. The subcontract required MBT to indemnify Skyway. A recovery against Skyway for negligent hiring travels straight back to MBT, so the worker's employer pays twice for the same injury and the no-fault bargain in c. 152 becomes a fault system by another route. Mr. Suquilanda's own complaint conceded a related point: paragraph 8 pleads that any recovery would be subject to repayment under New York's compensation laws. That is the carrier's lien, a different mechanism from the indemnification loop, but it shows both sides knew from the first filing that money recovered from Skyway would not all stay with the worker. The Court treated the loop as a legislative problem, not a judicial one.

None of that answers what happens to a roofer who cannot work again and whose compensation benefits replace a fraction of his wages. The Court said the Legislature is the body equipped to answer it. Until it does, the answer for injured workers lives in the evidence of who controlled safety on the site.

Wayne's read

Lawyers Weekly quoted Wayne on what defense counsel will do next.

"Although the court's decision does appear to be fact specific, I would anticipate additional dispositive motions by defense counsel as they test the parameters of this ruling."

Wayne H. Peereboom, as quoted in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, August 27, 2026

Expect summary judgment motions arguing that the general contractor on your job looked like Skyway: a contract that put means and methods on the subcontractor, a permit, a few site visits, and nothing else. The way to beat that motion is a record that shows otherwise.

What this means if you or a family member is hurt on a job in Western Massachusetts

Suquilanda does not close the courthouse to injured subcontractor employees. It tells you what the case has to prove and how early the proof has to be gathered.

1. File your workers' compensation claim. Nothing in this decision affects it, and it is the floor of your recovery.
2. Preserve the paper before it disappears. The prime contract, the subcontract, the permit file, the site safety plan, daily logs, toolbox-talk sign-ins, and photographs of the setup. The retained-control question turns on these documents and on what supervisors actually did.
3. Identify everyone who was on site with authority. Who told the crew where to tie off, who inspected fall protection, who could stop work. A supervisor who did those things is Ku. A supervisor who only dropped off materials is Skyway.
4. Raise choice of law early if the crew came from out of state. Mr. Suquilanda lost that argument in the Superior Court and never got it in front of the SJC.
5. Look past the general contractor. Owners, equipment suppliers, and other trades on site can carry their own duties. The premises question was never litigated in Suquilanda.

Wayne takes these cases from our Westfield office. He has represented workers hurt on job sites across Berkshire, Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties.

About Wayne H. Peereboom

Wayne focuses on serious personal injury, wrongful death, general litigation, and trial practice. He has mediated and settled cases in the million-dollar-plus range and has obtained significant results for clients with catastrophic injuries and for families who lost a loved one to someone else's negligence.

He earned his J.D. in 1994 from Western New England College School of Law, where he competed on the Association of Trial Lawyers of America trial competition team and won the AmJur Award in Conflict of Laws. He holds a B.A., cum laude, from the State University of New York at Albany. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1994 and to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in 1995. He is a member of the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys.

Wayne practices from Dunn & Phillips' Westfield office at 56 Washington Street. Reach him at (413) 562-8300 or through the firm's contact page.

Sources: Suquilanda v. Skyway Roofing, Inc., 498 Mass. 164 (2026) (SJC-13878, argued Apr. 8, 2026, decided Aug. 17, 2026); Ku v. Framingham, 53 Mass. App. Ct. 727 (2002); Complaint, Suquilanda v. Skyway Roofing Corp. NY (Berkshire Super. Ct. Feb. 9, 2023); Eric T. Berkman, Subcontractor’s employee can’t sue general contractor over fall, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly (Aug. 27, 2026) (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-099-26).

Written by Blake Vrechek. This post is attorney advertising and general information, not legal advice. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.