Kentucky Court: Mine-Safety Laws Don’t Apply to Subcontractors

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Kentucky’s mine-safety laws and regulations didn’t apply to a subcontract worker who died while installing a massive garage door on a building at a mine site in Muhlenberg County, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Oct. 29.

David McCarty died when the door struck his stepladder, causing him to fall and strike his head. His widow filed a federal wrongful-death lawsuit against Covol Fuels, the coal mine operator. She claimed the operator negligently violated the safety laws and regulations.

A federal judge ruled in the coal operator’s favor, prompting an appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court asked Kentucky’s high court to rule on whether those safety laws and regulations were intended to protect employees of independent contractors working at mine sites.

Writing for the unanimous state court, Justice Daniel Venters noted that the safety law covers buildings and equipment connected to mine work.

The building where McCarty suffered his fatal fall was under construction and not being used “in connection with the workings” of the mine, Venters said. Similarly, equipment used to install the 1,800-pound garage door did not meet the statutory definition, he said.

As a result, the work was outside the scope of the safety law, he said.

“We are unable to identify any provisions within that chapter that impose upon coal mine operators a special duty of care owed to independent contractors and craftsmen who enter upon the premises to perform work unrelated to coal mining,” Venters wrote.

“Of course, the traditional common law duty of a landholder to make the property reasonably safe and to warn of unknown or latent dangers remains applicable, but that duty is outside the scope of the question we address.”

The state’s high court rejected arguments by McCarty’s estate that periodic inspections required by the safety law should apply equally to mining workers and specialized independent contractors working at mine sites.

Venters said it’s clear that the General Assembly’s intent when enacting the safety law was to protect workers involved in actual coal mining operations and “other ancillary workers exposed to dangers of the mining environment.”

“Nothing in the statutory text tasks the mine operator with tending to the safety of non-mining craftsmen and technicians and protecting them from the hazards of their own non-mining occupations,” he wrote.

Given the statute’s emphasis on the dangers of mining, it’s “highly improbable” that the legislature intended “to burden coal mine inspectors and supervisors with the duty to become versed in the safety requirements of such extraneous activities” as installing garage doors, Venters added.

“Expecting the mine operator to provide safety inspections for the unfamiliar work of specialized independent contractors would divert resources away from the safety of workers actually engaged in mining coal, thereby increasing the very risks that the statute is designed to reduce,” he said.

As a result, McCarty was not “within the class of persons intended to be protected” by the safety law, and the circumstances of his death were not the “type of occurrence” that the statute was intended to prevent, Venters said.