The paperwork all pointed one way - control over the work pointed the other
Paperwork calling a worker an independent contractor didn't hold up. A Pennsylvania court said control over the job is what counts.
A satellite dish installer fell from a ladder on October 28, 2019, and was badly hurt while on a job for J&S Technology Solutions. When he filed for workers' compensation, J&S argued he wasn't an employee at all. He was an independent contractor, the company said, and the paperwork seemed to back that up.
He had signed an independent contractor agreement when J&S first hired him in 2015. He was paid by the job and issued a 1099. He drove his own van, used his own hand tools, and carried his own commercial liability insurance. On his tax forms, he listed himself as a sole proprietor.
None of it settled the question. On August 4, 2026, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania affirmed that the installer was an employee of J&S when he was injured.
The court leaned on a familiar rule: control over the work, and the right to control it, are the primary factors. What mattered, the court said, was that J&S had the right to control the work, even where it didn't exercise that right. The installer couldn't work for competing companies, couldn't turn down jobs, and couldn't bring a helper without approval. Every customer issue ran through J&S. The company handled his background check, trained him, supplied the major equipment, and tracked him through an app during the workday.
Installing satellite dishes was J&S's regular business, and the company used both employees and contractors for the identical work - a pattern the court said "raises questions about the misclassification of the independent contractors."
The contractor agreement had expired in 2016 and was never renewed. And the court cautioned that paper markers like independent contractor agreements and 1099s deserve a careful eye, because employers can lean on them "as a means of avoiding legitimate" workers' compensation liability.
The ruling wasn't unanimous. One judge dissented, arguing the workers' compensation judge treated a legal question as a fact and skipped over key documents - the expired agreement, the tax forms, the installer's own insurance, and a payroll list that left his name off.
A second part of the case moved the bill. J&S had let its own workers' comp coverage lapse after failing to pay the renewal premium. The court found the insurer's agent had misrepresented that coverage in a certificate that Dish Network relied on, and held the insurer was barred from denying it. That reversed Dish Network's liability as the statutory employer and sent the matter back to the workers' compensation judge, where further proceedings are still pending.
