The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to address questions regarding what it takes for general contractors to establish statutory employer status after the Superior Court knocked out a $5.5 million jury verdict in the underlying suit last year, finding that the defendant was immune from under the Workers’ Compensation Act.

In a May 16 order, the high court granted allocatur in Yoder v. McCarthy Construction, looking to answer whether the court should overrule its 1999 decision in Fonner v. Shandon, “and hold  that the General Assembly’s 1974 amendments to the Workers’ Compensation Act, making it mandatory for all employers to obtain workers’ compensation coverage, necessitates denying ‘statutory employer’ status to general contractors unless they in fact have been called on to pay workers’ compensation benefits to the injured employee of a subcontractor.”