Don't Delegate Duty to Provide Safety Devices

Don't assume that the tenant—and not you or your property manager—is responsible for providing safety devices, such as ladders, to contractors that tenants have hired to do work at your building. If your state law allows you to designate in the lease that the tenant has this responsibility, then the tenant—not you—will be liable for negligence regarding safety equipment. Otherwise, you may end up in a case where it's difficult to tell who is liable when a contractor is injured when using safety devices—like ladders—that are not his property.

For example, a sporting goods store tenant at a shopping mall hired a contractor to hang its sign and provided a ladder for him to use while working. The contractor claimed that he had warned the tenant and mall manager that the feet on the ladder were worn out, but was told to “just continue working with it.” The contractor fell off the ladder while hanging the sign, suffering severe injuries. The contractor sued the mall owner, tenant, and manager, claiming that he fell because the tenant and manager failed to provide him with a secure ladder that he could use while working at an elevated height.

The state's labor law required owners and their agents, such as the mall owner and manager, to provide workers—including contractors—with appropriate safety devices to protect against accidents including “falling from a height.” Despite the fact that the owner, tenant, and manager knew that the ladder was faulty, each claimed that the other two were responsible for replacing it.

But the duty to provide safety devices such as ladders was nondelegable—that is, the duty could not be assigned to another person—the court pointed out, because the purpose of the law is to protect workers by placing the ultimate responsibility to provide adequate safety equipment on the owners and owners’ agents (here, the owner and manager) of the properties where the work is being done.

• Shim v. Vornado Realty Trust, et al., June 2010