In a published decision filed on December 3, 2025, the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Six, affirmed summary judgment in favor of a homeowner who was sued by an independent contractor’s employee injured while performing inspection work on the property. In Andrews v. Wagner (No. B332276), the court held that the Privette doctrine barred the employee’s negligence and premises liability claims and that neither the “hirer” exception nor the concealed-hazard exception articulated in Kinsman v. Unocal Corp. applied under the undisputed facts of the case.
The plaintiff, Robert Andrews, was employed as an independent field inspector by Property and Casualty Surveys, Inc. (PCSI), a company hired by a homeowner’s insurance carrier to conduct a residential property inspection. Andrews had performed thousands of similar inspections and was responsible for identifying hazardous conditions, documenting safety issues, and preparing reports for insurance underwriting purposes. While inspecting the backyard of the homeowner’s property, Andrews fell down steps made of wooden railroad ties and sustained injuries. He later acknowledged that the steps were visible, that he had not been paying attention to where he was stepping, and that had he looked down he likely would not have fallen. Andrews received workers’ compensation benefits and subsequently sued the homeowner for negligence and premises liability, with his wife asserting a derivative loss-of-consortium claim.
The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the homeowner based on the Privette doctrine, which generally precludes an employee of an independent contractor from recovering tort damages from the person who hired the contractor for work-related injuries. On appeal, the plaintiffs argued that Privette did not apply because the homeowner did not directly hire PCSI and that, even if Privette applied, triable issues of fact existed under the concealed-hazard exception recognized in Kinsman. The Court of Appeal rejected both arguments.
Addressing the threshold question of whether the homeowner qualified as a “hirer” under Privette, the court concluded that the doctrine applied even though the inspection company was retained by the homeowner’s insurance carrier rather than by the homeowner personally. The court reasoned that by paying premiums for insurance coverage and consenting to the inspection required by the insurer, the homeowner effectively delegated responsibility for workplace safety to the independent contractor. The court emphasized that Privette’s policy rationale focuses on delegation of safety responsibility, not technical distinctions about who signed a service contract, and held that both the insurer and the homeowner were part of the same chain of delegation for purposes of the doctrine.
The Court of Appeal also rejected the plaintiffs’ reliance on Gordon v. ARC Manufacturing, Inc. and Ramirez v. PK I Plaza 580 SC LP, explaining that those cases addressed different doctrines or materially different factual relationships. In contrast, the relationship between an insured homeowner and an insurer-retained inspection contractor fell squarely within the scope of Privette’s delegation principles. The court further noted that expanding homeowner liability in such circumstances would be inconsistent with the workers’ compensation system that underpins the Privette doctrine.
Turning to the concealed-hazard exception under Kinsman, the court held that the plaintiffs failed to raise a triable issue of fact. Under Kinsman, a hirer may be liable if it knows or should know of a concealed preexisting hazard, the contractor could not reasonably discover the hazard, and the hirer fails to warn the contractor. The court concluded that the steps were not concealed, that Andrews admitted they were visible, and that any claim that they were slippery due to moisture or moss was speculative. The court emphasized that speculation cannot defeat summary judgment and that the record contained no substantial evidence showing that the homeowner knew of a dangerous condition on the day of the incident or that Andrews could not reasonably have identified the condition himself.
The court also found it significant that Andrews was a trained professional whose job required him to identify hazardous conditions and that the alleged hazard was part of the very property he had been assigned to inspect. Under those circumstances, responsibility for workplace safety remained with the independent contractor, not the homeowner. Because the negligence and premises liability claims failed as a matter of law, the derivative loss-of-consortium claim necessarily failed as well. The Court of Appeal therefore affirmed the judgment in full.
The Andrews decision reinforces the breadth of the Privette doctrine and clarifies that homeowners may be treated as hirers even where inspection or maintenance work is arranged through an insurance carrier. The opinion also underscores the narrow scope of the concealed-hazard exception and the evidentiary burden plaintiffs must meet to invoke it. For property owners, insurers, and contractors alike, the case illustrates how California courts continue to apply Privette to allocate responsibility for workplace safety within the workers’ compensation framework, particularly where the injured worker is a trained professional engaged to identify risks inherent in the work itself.