Plaintiff’s attempt to assert a common law wrongful discharge claim against an alleged “joint employer” rejected

A company hired the plaintiff as a laborer and driver and assigned him to work at Lowe’s. The plaintiff injured his ankle approximately two weeks after he was hired and subsequently filed for workers’ compensation benefits. The company then placed the plaintiff on “modified duty.” However, the plaintiff alleged that he was informed that he was being “let go” because Lowe’s “will not take anyone with a work-related injury.” Thereafter, the plaintiff filed a wrongful discharge lawsuit, alleging that he was terminated in violation of Pennsylvania’s public policy for seeking workers’ compensation benefits. He named Lowe’s as a defendant, alleging that it was a “joint employer” with the entity that actually paid him. The court, however, rejected the plaintiff’s claim, declining to extend a common law wrongful discharge claim to a temporary employer who did not offer or provide workers’ compensation benefits to a plaintiff, reasoning that since it did not provide those benefits to the plaintiff, “it would have no reason to retaliate against the plaintiff for filing the claim.” The court further rejected the plaintiff’s argument that a common law wrongful discharge claim should apply to Lowe’s since it was a “joint employer” of the plaintiff. In particular, the court expressly noted that “the plaintiff has failed to cite to a single case recognizing a retaliation claim against an employer who did not provide Workers’ Compensation benefits with or without the ‘joint employer’ theory” and, as a result, “the “‘joint employer’ theory is inapplicable to the instant case.”

_{Case Law Alerts, 3rd Quarter, July 2015}

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