§ 25-21,187.Contract or agreement; indemnity provision; against public policy; unenforceable; when; construction project; violation of safety practice; liability.

Section 25-21,187 addresses two distinct liability problems on construction projects. The first involves indemnity clauses. A public or private contract for constructing, altering, repairing, or maintaining a building, structure, highway, bridge, viaduct, or water, sewer, or gas system, or for related moving, demolition, or excavation work, sometimes includes a clause requiring one party to indemnify or hold another party harmless from that other party’s own negligence. This section declares any such covenant, promise, or agreement void as against public policy and wholly unenforceable. The voiding rule does not reach construction bonds or insurance contracts, which fall outside its scope.

The second part protects design professionals from a specific type of tort exposure on the job site. A professional architect, engineer, or land surveyor retained to perform professional services on a construction project, and any employee assisting or representing that professional, is not liable in tort for the personal injury or death of an employee working on the project when the injury arises from a violation of a safety practice by a third party. That protection has a limit built in: it disappears if the design professional assumed responsibility for supervising safety practices, whether by contract or by other conduct. The section is careful to say it does not otherwise establish, diminish, or abrogate any duty, standard of care, or liability a person already has, beyond what this subsection expressly provides.

Together, the two halves of the section keep contractual risk-shifting from insulating a negligent party at another’s expense, while keeping design professionals out of tort liability for job-site safety failures they did not take responsibility for supervising.