Keeping a Leash on Moonlighting Supers
Many superintendents in co-op and condo buildings do minor repair and maintenance jobs on the side for shareholders and unit-owners. It’s a common practice that’s loaded with uncommon perils – ones that boards should consider carefully before they get into deep, and costly, trouble.
“It really is problematic,” says Phyllis Weisberg, a lawyer with the firm of Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads. “There’s always a conflict between protecting the co-op or the condo from any potential liability, and at the same time wanting to give the residents a level of service and make their lives easier. There’s a constant tension on that. The board really has to think it through carefully and put some parameters around it.”
It’s not the little jobs that will get your building into trouble. It’s when the super tackles a job that is, disastrously, beyond his abilities.
“We’re not talking about the person who paid the super 20 bucks to put the air-conditioner in,” says Dean Roberts, a lawyer with the firm of Norris McLaughlin & Marcus. “But if he fixes a pipe and the pipe breaks and floods out the entire m-line of the building, it’s a whole different ballpark. So the board has to manage it – either by very strenuously forbidding it, or by accepting it with very clear guidelines, then monitoring it.”
There are numerous monitoring techniques. “There are boards that will adopt rules that say, ‘The super or staff member can do work in an apartment provided it doesn’t take more 30 minutes of their time, and it’s not in excess of their skill set, and they have to set up through management in advance.’” Roberts says. “That way you have some degree of control. There are other buildings that prepare schedules of work that can be done at a particular apartment with the shareholder paying for the part, the super or another staff member doing the work, and that’s the only work that’s permitted in the apartments.”
So what happens when the super gets injured while he’s doing a job for a shareholder?
“The first thing a co-op board and management should do is talk to their insurance broker about what’s covered by their policies,” Roberts says. “If the super’s fixing a sink off-hours and gets injured, is that Worker’s Comp? If it’s not covered by Worker’s Comp, the sky’s the limit.”
A policy gives a measure of protection boards protection.
“If you have a policy and some rules for the super,” Weisberg says, “if the super then exceeds his authority in effect by doing work that he is not supposed to do in apartments, you would at least have something to point to and say, ‘You have violated our rule.’ And if you need to, you can write up the super and gain some degree of control over him through the disciplinary process. If you have no rules, you really can’t do that.”