Wright v. Excel Paralubes, No. 14-31215 (5th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff filed a negligence suit against defendants after he was injured while employed as a boilermaker by Wyatt. CP entered into a contract with Wyatt to perform work on a vacuum tower. CP and Wyatt signed a Master Services Agreement (MSA). At issue was whether a non-operating partner in a joint-venture qualifies as a “statutory employer” as that term is used in the Louisiana Workers’ Compensation Act (LWCA), LA. Stat. Ann. 23:1021 et seq., even though the operating partner signed a contract with a contractor that did not specifically designate the non-operating partner as a “statutory employer.” Whether viewed in terms of the inherent legal relationships among CP, Excel, and the joint venture and Wyatt, or proper inferences drawn from the MSA, the court did not think the parties’ failure to name or require the signature of Excel in the MSA can overcome the broad presumption of statutory employer status approved by Louisiana courts. The very purpose of CP and Excel in creating the joint venture was to give CP the exact operational authority it exercised on behalf of the joint venture when it signed the MSA with Wyatt. The parties’ written contract, in essence, “recognized” the parties to the joint venture as the statutory employers through their authorized agent. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
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