Liability for Independent Contractors

Abstract

One of the most disturbing features of the law of tort in recent years is the way in which the courts have extended, seemingly without any reference to considerations of policy, the liability for independent contractors. An independent contractor may be defined for the present purpose as any person, other than a servant, who is employed to do work. The definition includes such diverse persons as a builder, a road construction engineer, an electrician, a dentist or doctor attending a private patient, a shoe-repairer, a launderer, a dressmaker, a barber, an airline company, a taxi-driver, a copy-typist, an advisory expert, and a charwoman if not a servant. But a vendor is clearly not a contractor for this purpose (so that if, for example, I order a particular type of gunpowder to be made for me as a purchaser, I am not to be regarded as an employer of an independent contractor, and will not be liable, if the seller's works blow up, under any of the heads of liability to be discussed presently). Similarly it is submitted that a landlord who covenants to repair is not an independent contractor for the tenant; hence such rules of liability for contractors as have been developed would not apply to the tenant. The landlord would be an independent contractor for the law of tort only if it were contemplated that he was to do the repairs himself or by his servants.