A subcontractor works on a general contractor's job site without workers' compensation insurance. If the subcontractor's employee is injured, who may be liable?

Explanation

An unlicensed or uninsured subcontractor's workers can be deemed employees of the hiring contractor, so the general contractor's own workers' compensation policy answers the injury and its loss experience carries the claim — which is why verifying each sub's certificate before mobilisation is not paperwork but risk control. (a) is what everyone assumes, and the point of the statutory employer doctrine is that it does not stop there. (c) misroutes a work injury to group health, which coordinates around workers' compensation rather than replacing it. (d) reaches a party who neither hired nor directed the injured worker.