A landlord's tenant leases warehouse space, promises to name the landlord as an additional insured, and buys a commercial general liability policy to do it. The tenant's own employee is then badly hurt on the premises and sues the landlord. Does the tenant's CGL carrier owe the landlord a defense and indemnity, or do the policy's employee and workers' compensation exclusions wipe out coverage? In SL 10 Park Place, LLC v. Utica National Insurance Group, the Appellate Division answered squarely for the additional insured, and in doing so drew a bright line that every workers' compensation practitioner should understand.
Decided July 15, 2026, the unpublished per curiam opinion affirmed a Morris County judgment requiring Utica to indemnify the landlord for $1 million and to pay the full defense tab of $647,939.78. It is not precedential, but its reasoning is a clean tutorial on where the workers' compensation bargain ends and third-party liability coverage begins.
How the Injury Reached a CGL Policy
SL 10 Park Place owned a commercial building and let the second-floor space to FogartyBrothers' moving operation. The lease required Fogarty Brothers to carry $1 million in liability coverage naming the landlord as an additional insured. Fogarty Brothers satisfied that obligation with a Utica CGL policy. In 2020, Jeffrey Fogarty fell into an elevator shaft and suffered serious injuries. He sued the landlord and the elevator maintenance company, but not, notably, his own employer.
That last fact is thefulcrum of the workers' strike dispute. Fogarty could not sue Fogarty Brothers in tort. New Jersey's exclusive remedy provision, N.J.S.A. 34:15-8, makes workers' compensation the sole remedy against an employer for a work injury, absent an intentional wrong. So the injured worker did what the statute channels injured workers to do: he collected compensation from his employer's compensation carrier and pursued a third-party action against the parties he was permitted to sue, the landlord and the elevator company.
When the landlord's own carrier tendered the defense to Utica, Utica denied it, insisting the landlord was not an additional insured and that its employee and workers' compensation exclusions barred any duty in any event. The tort case settled for $8 million with no admission of liability, and the coverage fight went to trial and then to the Appellate Division.
Why the Compensation Exclusions Did Not Apply
Utica's most instructive argument, for compensation lawyers, was that its policy's workers' compensation and employer's liability exclusions defeated coverage. Coverage A of the Utica policy excluded any obligation of the insured under a workers' compensation or similar law, and excluded bodily injury to an employee of the insured arising out of emloyment. Utica argued, that because it is a liability insurer and not a compensation insurer,indemnity for injurye to pay indemfored to a work injury.
The court rejected the premise. The key word in both exclu"s is th"e insured. The Utica policy contained a separation of insureds clause providing that the coverage applies separately to each insured against whom a claim is made. Under longstanding New Jersey authority, Erdo v. Torcon Construction Co., a severability clause creates, in effect, multiple policies with identical terms but different insureds, and the employee exclusion is read as if each insured were the only insured.
Applied here, the exclusion bars coverage only for injury to an employee of that particular insured. Jeffrey Fogarty was an employee of Fogarty Brothers, the tenant. He was not an employee of the landlord. So as to the landlord, the additional insured seeking coverage, Fogarty was simply an injured third party, not an employee. The employee and workers' compensation exclusions never engaged. The court also cited Argent v. Brady, whis the difference between coverage barred as ande" insured versus "an" insured, a small grammatical hinge on which a great deal of coverage turns.
The Independent Acts Exclusion
Utica also pointed to an endorsement excluding coverage for the additional insured's own independent acts or omissions, arguing its coverage was limited to vicarious liability only. The court read "independent" narrowly against the drafter. Fogarty's complaint pleaded multiple theories against the landlord, including joint and several liability and vicarious liability through comm,n ladefinitiony. Because vicarious and joint liability by definition flow from the conduct of more than one party, they are not "independent" acts of the landlord alone. Relying on Rosario v. Haywood, the court held that where an insured faces liability beyond its sole negligence, an exclusion for the insured's own negligence does not relieve the carrier of its duty. The duty to defend persists until every covered theory is eliminated.
What This Means for Injured Workers
The decision reinforces the architecture that makes injured workers whole beyond the modest ceiling of the compensation schedule. New Jersey wage replacement runs at roughly seventy percent of wages, compensation pays nothing for pain and suffering, and permanency awards rarely capture a young worker's lost ear34:15-4 that gap-buands it works under N.J.S.A. 34:15-40 is what fills that gap, and it workscarry if tcan reachs the liability permitted to sue actually carry, and can reach, real liability coverage.
When a landlord or premises owner is named as an additional insured on a tenant's CGL policy, SL 10 Park Place confirms that the tenant-employer's compensation exclusions do not travel with the claim to defeat the landlord's coverage. The injured worker's recovery, and the comp carrier's subrogation lien against that recovery, both depend on that coverage surviving. A contrary rule would have let CGL carriers use the compensation bargain as a shield in the very third-party actions the comp statute is designed to separate the severability clause first. A separation of insureds respecton can neutralize an employee or comp exclusion as to an additional insured who did not employ the injured worker.
Distinguish "the" insured from "an" insured. Exclusions keyed to "the" insured apply only to the specific insured with the employment relationship, not to co-insureds.
Tender early and preserve the lien. A carrier that wrongly denies a defense loses control of defense costs and may owe the entire tab, apportioned or not, along with the comp carrier's stake riding on the third-party recovery.
Do not confuse compensability with liability coverage. An injury compensable under the Act as to the employer can still be a covered third-party liability claim as to a separate additional insured.
Sources
1. SL 10 Park Place, LLC v. Utica National Insurance Group, No. A-0763-24, 2026 WL 2042987 (N.J. App. Div. July 15, 2026)
2. N.J.S.A. 34:15-8 (exclusive remedy / intentional wrong)
3. N.J.S.A. 34:15-40 (third-party actions and lien)
4. Erdo v. Torcon Construction Co., 275 N.J. Super. 117 (App. Div. 1994)
5. Argent v. Brady, 386 N.J. Super. 343 (App. Div. 2006)
6. Rosario ex rel. Rosario v. Haywood, 351 N.J. Super. 521 (App. Div. 2002)
About the Author
Jon L. Gelman of Wayne, NJ, is the author of NJ Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise Modern Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters).
Blog: Workers' Compensation
LinkedIn: JonGelman
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