Can you sue a third party after a construction accident?

By Michael Shemtoub, trial attorney, Beverly Law. Updated November 2026.

Who can be sued after a construction accident

Your own employer is usually off the table, as our FAQ on suing your employer for a work injury explains. Everyone else on the project is a possible defendant. The list often includes:

• The general contractor that ran the site and set the schedule.
• Another subcontractor whose crew left an opening uncovered, dropped a load or blocked a walkway.
• The property owner or developer that hired the general contractor.
• The company that made, sold or rented a scaffold, lift, ladder, saw or harness that failed.
• A driver or trucking company whose vehicle hit you inside the work zone.

California, Texas and Washington all keep that right alive while you receive comp (Labor Code 3852, Labor Code 417.001, RCW 51.24.030). What changes from state to state is how hard it is to win against the companies higher up the contract chain.

California: the Privette rule and its exceptions

In Privette v. Superior Court (1993), the owner of a duplex hired a roofing company, and one of the roofer’s employees fell from a ladder while carrying hot tar and was burned. The California Supreme Court held that the worker could not use the “peculiar risk” doctrine to sue the owner, because workers’ comp already covers injuries to the contractor’s employees and the owner was not at fault. That decision is the starting point for any California claim against the company that hired your employer.

The Privette rule has exceptions. In Hooker v. Department of Transportation (2002), a crane operator died when his crane tipped on a Caltrans overpass. The court held that a hirer that keeps control over safety is liable to a contractor’s employee only when the way it exercised that control “affirmatively contributed” to the injury. Caltrans won because nothing showed that its use of that control contributed to the death; it had never told the operator to retract the crane’s outriggers. In Kinsman v. Unocal Corp. (2005), the court added a second path: a landowner can be liable for a concealed hazard it knew or should have known about, that the contractor did not know about and could not reasonably discover, when the landowner failed to warn.

These cases are about the company that hired your employer. A claim against the maker of a defective lift or saw follows California’s product rules, under which a manufacturer is strictly liable for a defective product that injures someone (Greenman v. Yuba Power Products).

Texas: Chapter 95 shields many property owners

Texas has a statute aimed at property owners. Chapter 95 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code applies to injury claims by a contractor, a subcontractor or their employees that arise from the condition or use of an improvement to real property the contractor is building, repairing, renovating or modifying (CPRC 95.002). It defines a property owner as one that owns real property “primarily used for commercial or business purposes” (95.001).

Under section 95.003, that owner is not liable unless two things are both true. It exercised or retained some control over the manner of the work, beyond the right to start or stop it, inspect progress or receive reports. And it had actual knowledge of the danger and failed to adequately warn. That is a hard standard, so in Texas the general contractor, another subcontractor or an equipment maker is often the more realistic defendant. If your own employer is a Texas non-subscriber, you may be able to sue it as well, as our Texas non-subscriber guide describes. Texas cases are handled by the firm’s Texas-licensed attorneys, Joyce Ondich and John Efstathiou.

Washington: the general contractor’s nondelegable duty

Washington goes the other way. In Stute v. P.B.M.C., Inc. (1990), the Washington Supreme Court held that a general contractor owes every worker on the site, including subcontractors’ employees, a duty to follow the safety rules adopted under the Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act. In Vargas v. Inland Washington, LLC (2019), the court explained that no analysis of whether the general contractor retained control is needed for that duty, because its supervisory role gives it control of the workplace. The court also said this is not strict liability: the injured worker still has to prove that someone was negligent.

The safety rules themselves come from RCW 49.17.060, which requires every employer to keep the workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause serious injury or death and to comply with the rules adopted under the chapter. A citation for a missing guardrail or an unprotected edge on your site can therefore matter in the injury case. The L&I election and lien steps are in our Washington work injury guide.

Safety records that can become evidence

Government safety files often hold the first written account of what went wrong. In California, an employer must report a serious injury, illness or death to the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) immediately (Labor Code 6409.1(b)). In Elsner v. Uveges (2004), the California Supreme Court held that Cal/OSHA provisions can be used to show the standard of care in a negligence case against a third party such as a general contractor, for accidents on or after January 1, 2000, when the 1999 amendment to Labor Code 6304.5 took effect.

Federal OSHA requires employers to report a work fatality within 8 hours, and an in-patient hospitalization, amputation or loss of an eye within 24 hours (OSHA). States with their own safety programs may have different reporting rules. Under the federal recordkeeping rule, a current or former employee can ask for the OSHA 300 injury log and their own 301 incident report and must get copies by the end of the next business day (29 C.F.R. 1904.35).

What this means for your case

Write down the name of every company on the site the day you were hurt, including the general contractor, each subcontractor, the owner and any rental company. Photograph the area before it is cleaned up, and keep the tool or equipment if you can. The third-party claim follows the ordinary injury deadline: two years in California (CCP 335.1) and Texas (CPRC 16.003), and generally three years in Washington (RCW 4.16.080). Your own share of fault is handled differently in each state, as our comparative fault FAQ explains, and any comp benefits are usually repaid from the recovery, covered in workers’ comp versus a personal injury claim. More answers are on our injury law FAQs page.

Common questions

Related pages

Injury law FAQs

Important: This page is general information, not legal or medical advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different; talk to a lawyer about yours. Texas cases are handled by the firm’s Texas-licensed attorneys, Joyce Ondich and John Efstathiou. Last reviewed: November 7, 2026.