With all due respect to the earlier responders, the OP should definitely explore this issue with counsel directly because the question of third party liability does not appear settled in North Carolina or in most of the states in the country for that matter. It does not seem that any NC court has addressed this issue in published opinion.
Nor does the above-referenced NC statute appear to preclude a third party claim. In fact, this state law, the Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act, explicitly prohibits discrimination by “persons” (not just immediate employers) against individuals who have filed workers compensation claims. The statute does not appear to limit its scope to an employee’s immediate or current employer or to exclude subsequent, third party employers. Nor does the statute apparently foreclose alternative common law or other overlapping forms of relief.
The question of third party liability seems to still be developing in most jurisdictions across the country. I have only found five decisions addressing this issue. In one decision, the Kentucky Supreme Court decided against extending the anti-retaliation provision to subsequent employers. Nelson Steel Corp. v. McDaniel, 898 S.W.2d 66 (Ky. 1995). In four other decisions, however, state appellate courts extended the anti-retaliation or anti-discrimination provision to third-party employers. Darnell v. Impact Industries, 457 N.E.2d 125 (Ill. App. 1983); Taylor v. Cache Creek Nursing Center, 891 P.2d 607 (Okla. 1994); Goins v. Ford Motor Co., 347 N.W.2d 184 (Mich. App. 1983); Hayes v. Computer Sciences Corp., 2003 Tenn. App. LEXIS 23 (Tenn. App. 2003).
At bottom, individuals in other states have successfully sued their prospective employer (pursuant to an anti-retaliation and/or anti-discrimination theory) for denying them jobs due to their workers compensation complaints filed against prior employers. The question here is whether NC would similarly allow a worker to advance a statutory and/or common law claim against a third party employer.
