Kinsman v. Unocal Asbestos case: Landowner Premises Liability

Read the discussion in the Kinsman v. Unocal asbestos case, where premises liability and the duties of landowners are discussed.

We find the formulation somewhat confusing and only partly correct. It is not clear, in the context of premises liability, what it means to say that:

“[w]here . . . the dangerous condition causing injury is either created by the independent contractor or is, at least in part, the object of the work of the independent contractor, the duty to protect the independent contractor’s employees from hazards resides with the independent contractor and not the hirer who may also generally control the premises.”

If the employee of an independent contractor as part of his job, for example, burrows into ground belonging to the landowner/hirer, and is injured when he ruptures an underground storage tank containing a hazardous substance that the landowner knew was present but the contractor did not, the dangerous condition causing the injury was arguably “the object of the work of the independent contractor.”

But that fact should not preclude landowner liability. What is critical in the above hypothetical is that if the landowner knew or should have known of the hazard and the contractor did not know and could not have reasonably discovered it, then the landowner delegated the responsibility for employee safety to the contractor without informing the contractor of critical information that would allow the contractor to fulfill its responsibility.

Under such circumstances the landowner may be liable. Nor would it matter, as Unocal argues, that the substance was not hazardous until the employee performed a certain action that released the hazard. The landowner may be liable for any injury from a latent hazard that a contractor’s employee would foreseeably encounter.

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