noting that “[a]lthough the Legislature ten weeks later amended the Labor Code to prohibit pre-injury waivers, Lawrence remains the law for those claims, like Reyes’, brought by workers who both signed non-subscriber agreements and suffered injury before [the amendment]”
How later courts described this case
- noting that “[a]lthough the Legislature ten weeks later amended the Labor Code to prohibit pre-injury waivers, Lawrence remains the law for those claims, like Reyes’, brought by workers who both signed non-subscriber agreements and suffered injury before [the amendment]”
- holding that Texas’ strong public policy for Workers’ Compensation favors even a radical extension of the doctrine to less-than-total-exculpation waivers where workers are involved
- finding when both parties have actual knowledge of the Mitchell Const. Co. v. Superior Commercial Concrete, LLC Page 9 terms, an agreement can be enforced even if the fair notice requirements were not satisfied
- recognizing that a “contract which fails to satisfy either of the fair notice requirements when they are imposed is unenforceable as a matter of law”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Silsbee Hospital, Inc. D/B/A Columbia Silsbee Doctors Hospital v. Lonny George (2005)
Reyes is distinguishable from this case.
The opinion
Justice SCHNEIDER,
concurring.
I fully agree with the Court that an employer must satisfy the fair notice requirements of the express-negligence doctrine and conspicuousness when it enrolls employees in a non-subscriber workers’ compensation benefits plan.
But I write separately to note that there is an additional reason why the fair notice requirements should apply to all nonsub-scriber agreements. Workers entering into these agreements are uniformly less sophisticated than the employers who draft them. It is unlikely that many workers are even aware of what exactly they are giving up by agreeing that they can neither sue their employer nor receive subscriber-level benefits in the event they are injured. Reyes is a prime example. A non-English speaker, he allegedly received a summary of the plan in Spanish, but the contract that he signed was in English. Moreover, it is undisputed that the waiver was not conspicuous.
Of course, not all contracts between sophisticated and unsophisticated parties must meet the fair notice requirements. But, because non-subscriber worker’s compensation plans are exclusively drafted by more sophisticated parties and offered to less sophisticated parties, there is a strong public policy justification to require those *195 agreements to meet both requirements. Accordingly, I join the Court’s opinion and concur in its judgment.