## Facts

- Glenn Parret, an employee of UNICCO Service Company, was electrocuted while replacing emergency lights at a tire plant in Oklahoma City owned by Bridgestone/Firestone.
- Parret died two days after the accident; his widow, Gwendolyn Kay Parret, received workers’ compensation death benefits.
- Bridgestone hired UNICCO as an independent contractor to provide broad maintenance services at the Oklahoma plant.
- The widow filed a civil action against UNICCO and Bridgestone in federal court.
- The federal court certified two questions of Oklahoma law concerning (1) when an employer’s conduct falls outside workers’ compensation exclusivity and (2) the geographic scope of the statutory-employer analysis for a private hirer with facilities in multiple jurisdictions.

## Issues

1. What intent standard allows an employee’s tort claim against an employer to proceed outside the exclusivity of the Oklahoma Workers’ Compensation Act: a specific-intent “true intentional tort” standard or a “substantial certainty” standard?
2. When determining a hirer’s principal/statutory-employer status under the “actually engaged in the contract work” portion of the Bradley v. Clark framework, may a court consider the hirer’s facilities outside Oklahoma?

## Decision

- The court adopted the “substantial certainty” standard for the intentional-tort exception to workers’ compensation exclusivity.
- The court held that, for the statutory-employer inquiry under the relevant portion of the Bradley framework, courts should consider only facilities located within Oklahoma and should not rely on out-of-state or foreign facilities.

## Legal Principles

- Workers’ compensation remains the exclusive remedy for workplace injuries arising out of and in the course of employment unless the employer’s conduct meets an intentional-tort threshold.
- An employer’s conduct falls outside exclusivity when the employer either (a) desired to bring about the worker’s injury or (b) acted with knowledge that the injury was substantially certain to result from the employer’s conduct.
- The “substantial certainty” standard is more demanding than negligence or gross negligence and requires more than a high probability of harm, but it does not require proof that the employer specifically intended the injury.
- In determining whether a private hirer is a principal/statutory employer under the “actually engaged in the contract work” inquiry, the analysis is limited to the hirer’s Oklahoma facilities and activities; out-of-state operations are not considered.

## Conclusion

The court clarified that an employee may avoid workers’ compensation exclusivity by showing employer conduct intended to injure or known to be substantially certain to cause injury, and it limited statutory-employer determinations to the hirer’s in-state (Oklahoma) facilities when assessing whether the hirer was actually engaged in the contracted work.


Parret v. UNICCO Serv. Co., 127 P.3d 572 (Okla. 2005)