One paralyzing roof fall, a $1 million workers' comp payout, a lawsuit against the general contractor – and one contract clause that ended it.
The Arkansas Court of Appeals on May 20, 2026, affirmed summary judgment for Reliable Poultry, LLC, in a negligence suit brought by Alfredo Martinez, a framer left paralyzed after a fall on a Tennessee jobsite.
Martinez worked for A&L Hernandez Construction LLC, a subcontractor Reliable hired to frame poultry houses in Beech Bluff, Tennessee, for owner Jenny Nguyen. On Oct. 27, 2021, he was working on a roof when a piece of lumber broke under him. He wasn't wearing fall protection or a harness. The fall paralyzed him.
Martinez applied for and received workers' compensation benefits under Tennessee law, collecting a settlement of more than $1 million. He then sued in Washington County, Arkansas, in June 2022 – first naming Reliable Poultry Supply, Inc. and later adding Reliable as a defendant. The supply company was dropped early; it had no involvement in the project, and Martinez didn't contest that on appeal.
Reliable's second summary judgment motion, filed in August 2023, argued it owed Martinez no duty of care as the general contractor. The trial judge agreed in October 2023. Martinez appealed.
The appeals court walked through the settled Arkansas rule: a general contractor owes a subcontractor's employees only a duty of ordinary care and a duty to warn of unusually hazardous conditions that might affect those workers. Martinez didn't argue either was breached. Instead, he argued Reliable had picked up a heightened duty by controlling the jobsite and by referencing federal workplace-safety regulations in its contract.
Neither argument stuck.
On site control, Reliable's supervisors testified they didn't dictate whether subcontractors worked safely – including whether a framer had to wear fall protection. Three memos Reliable sent to subcontractors covered injury reporting, keeping the site free of trash, banning alcohol and barring the use of damaged trailers. Each tracked an existing contract term. None, the court said, amounted to running the framers' day.
On the contract, the court drew a sharp line between Reliable's agreement and the broader liability-shifting terms in earlier cases like Elkins v. Arkla, Inc. and Bennett v. Graves & Assocs., Inc. Reliable's deal with A&L Hernandez ran the other way. It said Reliable would not provide detailed instructions on when, where or how the work was done – those calls were the contractor's. It said Reliable was not responsible for the contractor's hiring, supervising or paying assistants. And it said Reliable could not fire the contractor as long as the work met the contract specifications.
The clause Martinez leaned hardest on said the subcontractor was responsible for providing its employees with necessary safety equipment, and that all work would be performed with OSHA safety standards considered.
The court read that line tightly. It meant A&L Hernandez had to keep OSHA standards in mind while doing the work. It didn't mean Reliable agreed to enforce OSHA on A&L Hernandez employees.
Citing Henderson v. Tyson Foods, Inc., the court repeated the controlling test: no duty of care exists unless the prime contractor holds onto enough supervisory rights that the independent contractor isn't entirely free to do the work its own way. A&L Hernandez, the court said, was entirely free.
The court also turned down Martinez's bid to scrap the categorical duty framework for one based on foreseeability, pointing out that most of the controlling decisions are state supreme court rulings the appeals court has no power to overrule.
Reliable had also cross-appealed an earlier ruling that denied its motion to apply Tennessee workers' compensation law – which immunizes both the subcontractor and the general contractor when either provides coverage. With the direct appeal affirmed, the cross-appeal was dismissed as moot.
The takeaway for insurers is in the drafting. A clause saying OSHA standards will be considered isn't the same as agreeing to enforce them - and in Arkansas, courts will read it that way.
