When the General Contractor Isn't Responsible

By Brandon Calton, Esq.

Most people injured on a Massachusetts construction site work for a subcontractor. Workers' compensation pays their medical bills and part of their lost wages, but under G. L. c. 152, § 24 it is the only claim they have against their own employer, and it pays nothing for what the injury actually costs them. The case that makes someone whole, when there is one, is usually against the general contractor.

In August 2026, the Supreme Judicial Court made that case harder to bring with its recent ruling in in Suquilanda v. Skyway Roofing, Inc.

What Happened

In October 2021, a roofer named Luis Contento Suquilanda was moving a stack of shingles on a roof at the Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort in Hancock. He worked for MBT Construction Corp., which had been hired by the general contractor on the job, Skyway Roofing.

MBT's crew had installed anchors and fifty-foot safety lines on the roof. Mr. Suquilanda's line proved too short to finish the move he was making. He unclipped his harness intending to connect to a different line, and he slipped and fell before he could reattach it. He was airlifted to a hospital with catastrophic injuries.

He collected workers' compensation through his employer's insurer and sued Skyway. A Superior Court judge granted summary judgment to Skyway before trial, and in Suquilanda v. Skyway Roofing, Inc. the SJC affirmed.

The Rule the Court Applied

Under a 1985 decision called Corsetti v. Stone Co., a general contractor is responsible for injuries on the job when it keeps the right to control the work, including the right to run safety programs. If it keeps that control and then exercises it carelessly, it can be held liable. If it never had that control, it owes nothing.

Skyway never had it. It didn't decide where the safety lines anchored or whether they were long enough. MBT supplied its own fall protection equipment, as it had on seventy-two jobs for Skyway since 2020, and neither company trained MBT's workers to use it. Skyway's involvement on this job amounted to delivering shingles, a boom lift, and a dumpster – none of which had anything to do with the fall – and visiting the site twice before the accident to point out which roof to replace and check whether more materials were needed.

Mr. Suquilanda pointed to language in Skyway's contract with the resort requiring it to keep the premises safe and orderly. The Court called that a general duty at most, not control over how MBT did its work.

He also pointed to the building permit, which listed Skyway as the general contractor and required a general contractor to control the means and methods of construction safely. The Court rejected that too. A code provision can matter to whether someone breached a duty, but it cannot create a duty that doesn't already exist.

Finally, the Court held that a subcontractor's own employee cannot sue the general contractor for negligent hiring over injuries arising from the subcontractor's work – even though Skyway knew MBT had been cited by OSHA for fall protection violations on other jobs.

What This Means if You Were Hurt on a Job Site

It does not mean you have no case. It means the case turns on facts that were written down at the time and won't be available much longer.

Who supplied the fall protection? Who decided where it anchored? Who ran the safety meetings, and did the general contractor attend? Had the general contractor ever stopped work over a safety problem on that job before? And what does the subcontract say about who was responsible for safety? In Mr. Suquilanda's case it said nothing at all, and that silence is part of why the case ended the way it did.

The answers live in daily reports, superintendent logs, safety meeting sign-in sheets, equipment inspection records, the OSHA file, and text messages between the general contractor's superintendent and the crew foreman. Text messages get deleted. Logs get boxed up and lost. The longer you wait to have a lawyer send a letter telling everyone to preserve that material, the less of it survives.

If you've been injured on a construction site, please call the Law Offices of Samuel A. Segal at 617-383-3542 as soon as possible for a free consultation. Delays can result in claims being denied.