To hear safety consultant Kenneth “Skip” Guarini tell it, most builders don't particularly care about jobsite accidents because liability hardly ever lands on their doorsteps. The builder's risk is minimal at best, he says. Many examples seem to support his theory.
In the T.C. Construction accident at Brookfield Homes, for example, subcontractor T.C. was fined $8,060, but the builder was not. And in the David Weekley OSHA case where proposed fines totaled $221,500 for violations committed by the builder's subcontractors, Weekley was able to have the fines reduced to $9,000—less than five percent. This is typical, Guarini says: OSHA issues the citation, and the builder has the fine reduced to a pittance.
But sometimes the case isn't that simple and the builder is unable to avoid a hefty bill. In one Colorado case a few years ago, a national builder had to pay $5 million in a workers' comp insurance claim when a worker fell off a roof and broke his neck. None of the parties involved had workers' comp, and in Colorado an individual is allowed to “swim upstream” until he bumps into the first entity that does.
Though these outcomes are unusual, lawyers and government officials believe that more-severe penalties for builders who experience accidents on their jobsites are the solution to the high rate of construction accidents and deaths.