In Milling v. Burns & McDonnell Engineering Co., the Georgia Court of Appeals revived an injured worker’s negligence suit against an engineering firm, Burns & McDonnell Engineering Co. (“BME”), reversing summary judgment entered in the BME’s favor. The Court held an engineer performing program-management and coordination work owes a common-law duty of ordinary care to the workers of other contractors on the same project and contract language assigning safety to others does not erase that duty.

Georgia Power retained Pike Electric (“Pike”) to build and integrate a new electrical bay at a substation. BME provided program-management services to Georgia Power.

Under its master contract with Georgia Power, BME agreed to manage and coordinate all power-outage activity and to vet the outage sequence plans with the other contractors. That same contract stated that each contractor remained solely responsible for the safety of its own employees.

In November 2021, Christopher Milling, a Pike lineman, was told his work area had been de-energized. He was severely injured when his measuring equipment contacted an energized feeder in an adjacent bay the outage plan had not called to be de-energized. Milling sued BME, alleging it negligently approved an outage plan that left energized equipment too close to the active work zone.

The trial court granted BME summary judgment. It found that BME owed Milling no duty, whether by common law or under its contract, because Milling was not a third-party beneficiary of that contract. It also found Pike’s conduct broke the causal chain and Milling had equal or superior knowledge of the hazard.

The Court of Appeals reversed. Under long-standing Georgia law, where two or more contractors work on the same premises, each owes the others a duty of ordinary care not to injure their workers. That duty is not limited to the scope of work the contractor actually performed. The Court held BME’s master contract did not abrogate this common-law duty.

The Court also reversed on causation. The trial Court treated Pike’s conduct as a superseding cause, but the Court of Appeals held that an intervening negligent act is not automatically unforeseeable and that a single injury may have more than one proximate cause.

For engineers, Milling underscores that duty follows function. A firm that takes on program-management, construction-administration, or coordination responsibilities may owe a duty of care to workers of contractors. A contract clause placing safety with each contractor will not, by itself, in Georgia, shield a firm whose own scope of work touches the hazard.