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Oklahoma’s workers’ compensation laws exist to provide “no-fault” benefits for employees who are injured on-the-job. In exchange, the state grants civil immunity to employers, who cannot be sued for damages outside of the workers’ compensation system. And until recently, Oklahoma law also contained a special exemption for the state’s oil and gas producers.
On March 13, 2018, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued its opinion in Benedetti v. Cimarex Energy Company, the second successful challenge this year to the state’s special protections for the oil and gas industry. Frank Benedetti was employed by a contractor and assigned to work on an oil rig owned by Cimarex Energy Company. One day while working on the rig, Mr. Benedetti sustained serious injuries after he “slipped on an icy platform and fell more than thirty feet down a stairwell.”
When Mr. Benedetti sued Cimarex for negligence in failing to maintain the platform in a reasonably safe condition, the company moved to dismiss, citing a provision of Oklahoma workers’ compensation law that automatically defines oil and gas producers-and only oil and gas producers-as “employers” for purposes of civil immunity. In other words, regardless of the actual nature of the relationship between Mr. Benedetti and Cimarex, the law declared him to be the company’s employee and thus constrained by the “exclusive remedy” of workers’ compensation.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously held this provision of the workers’ compensation law to be unconstitutional. Specifically, Article 5, Section 59, of the Oklahoma Constitution states that laws must “have uniform operation throughout the State,” and that in most cases, “no special law shall be enacted.” Here, the Supreme Court justices unanimously agreed that granting oil and gas companies blanket immunity under the workers’ compensation system, regardless of the facts of a given case, constituted an impermissible “special law.”
Tulsa personal injury lawyer James E. Frasier noted the Supreme Court’s decision was not a surprise given the justices struck down a nearly identical law in a separate decision issued this past January. “The Oklahoma Supreme Court has now made it clear on two occasions that oil and gas companies are not entitled to special protections under the law. Contrary to the industry’s protests, these rulings will not open the floodgates to meritless litigation. Instead, it means that individual plaintiffs are entitled to have their claims heard on the merits.”
Indeed, the Supreme Court made it clear in its most recent decision that Mr. Benedetti may ultimately be classified as an “employee” of Cimarex for workers’ compensation purposes. However, both sides were entitled to conduct discovery first before a judge determines the actual nature of the parties’ professional relationship.
Release ID: 328514