¶ 1. This case arises from a wrongful death and survival action brought by the estate and survivors of Steven Arnold. Mr. Arnold died from cancer after exposure to formaldehyde in defendant landowners’ building. He collected workers’ compensation benefits for this injury from his employer, Corbin & Palmer, Inc. His estate and survivors subsequently brought the present action against defendant landowners. The trial court granted summary judgment for the defendant landowners, holding that plaintiffs’ exclusive remedy was Mr. Arnold’s workers’ compensation award because landowners were “statutory employers” under 21 V.S.A. § 601(3) and thus immune from suit. Because we find that landowners are not “statutory employers,” we reverse the trial court’s judgment and reinstate plaintiffs’ action.
¶ 2. In reviewing the superior court’s order granting defendants’ motions for summary judgment, we apply the same Rule 56 standard as the trial court, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, the nonmoving parties. See Robertson v. Mylan Labs., Inc., 2004 VT 15, ¶ 15,176 Vt. 356,848 A.2d 310; see also V.R.C.P. 56.
¶ 3. Mr. Arnold was employed as a funeral director at Corbin & Palmer, Inc., which conducts its business on leased *609property. During the relevant time period, the property was owned and leased by three successive entities that collectively make up the defendants in this suit. From 1992 to 2001, it was owned by two trusts, The Raymond E. Palmer Trust and The Gertrude M. Palmer Trust (Palmer Trusts). The Palmer Trusts leased the property to Corbin & Palmer throughout this time. Raymond Palmer was an employee of Corbin & Palmer until 2002. In January 2002, the Palmer Trusts conveyed the property to Pamela Hanley. Ms. Hanley, in turn, conveyed the property to a single-member limited liability corporation, C-P Burlington Properties, LLC, of which she was the sole member. Ms. Hanley has worked as a licensed funeral director for Corbin & Palmer since 1982. She was president of Corbin & Palmer for several years in the 1980s and has been president and treasurer since January 2002. As of 2003, Ms. Hanley owned 95% of the shares of Corbin & Palmer.
¶ 4. A large part of Mr. Arnold’s work involved embalming bodies, which entailed exposure to many chemicals, including formaldehyde. The embalming room also served as Mr. Arnold’s de facto office, where he would perform wax work, cosmetology, dressing and casketing, and make phone calls. The sole window in the embalming room was sealed and never opened.
¶ 5. When Mr. Arnold began working at the property, the embalming room was ventilated by a fan in the ceiling. At some point, this system was reconfigured so that the vent was on the floor. After this modification, the fan often failed to work, being out of commission as much as half of the time.
¶ 6. On more than one occasion, Mr. Arnold gave written notice to Ms. Hanley that the ventilation system was broken and needed to be fixed. Stephen Gregory, who worked in the embalming room, also complained several times to Ms. Hanley about the ventilation system and requested it be fixed. Ms. Hanley had been personally present in the embalming room during periods when the system was not working.
¶ 7. From around 2000 to 2003, Mr. Arnold experienced watery eyes, a burning throat, and a runny nose from the smell of the embalming fluids. He began a course of diagnosis and treatment, starting with his primary care physician and progressing to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. Ultimately, his physicians identified a cancerous tumor as the cause of his discomfort. This tumor was most likely caused by his exposure to formaldehyde and other embalming fluids at landowners’ property.
¶ 8. On the basis of these facts, Mr. Arnold pursued a workers’ compensation claim against his employer, Corbin & Palmer, for his work-related injury. That claim was settled in July 2006. Mr. Arnold succumbed to his cancer in November 2006. His surviving family and his estate then filed a separate premises liability claim against the various landlords who leased the subject property to Corbin & Palmer.
¶ 9. Plaintiffs have sued defendants in their capacity as landlords only. Despite this fact, defendants argue that plaintiffs’ premises liability claims are barred by the exclusivity provisions of the Vermont Workers’ Compensation Act, 21 V.S.A. § 622, and claim that they were Arnold’s “statutory employers” as defined in 21 V.S.A. § 601(3). Under the Act, a workers’ compensation award excludes all other rights and remedies for an employee’s work-related personal injuries against his employer, 21 V.S.A. § 622 (emphasis added), but an employee may bring suit against a “person other than the employer.” 21 V.S.A. § 624(a) (emphasis added). A “statutory employer” is one who, although not the direct employer, is nevertheless the “virtual proprietor or operator of the business there carried *610on.” Vella v. Hartford Vt. Acquisitions, Inc., 2003 VT 108, 115, 176 Vt. 151, 838 A.2d 126 (quotation omitted). Thus, the pertinent question is whether defendants, acting in their capacity as landlords, were the virtual proprietors of the Corbin & Palmer funeral home business such that they should be exempt from tort liability under the workers’ compensation statutes.
¶ 10. We addressed this same question in Vella. In that case, an employee of a bus company was injured when he slipped and fell on ice in a leased bus garage. The employee collected workers’ compensation benefits from his employer for his injuries and then brought a tort suit against the owner of the commercial garage, who leased the space to his employer. The landlord argued it was immune from tort liability as a statutory employer under 21 V.S.A. § 601(3). We explained that the
critical inquiry in determining whether an indirect employer is a “statutory employer” as defined by § 601(3) is whether the type of work being carried out by the direct employer is the type of work that could have been carried out by the indirect employer’s employees as part of the regular course of the business.
Vella, 2003 VT 108, ¶ 7 (quotations omitted). This reasoning is correct because the goal of the statute is “to prevent indirect employers from avoiding workers’ compensation liability by hiring out work that they would have otherwise done themselves.” Id. ¶ 10. We held that because the landlord was not in the busing business, but rather was “a distinct, separately owned corporation” engaged in the business of leasing property, it was not a “statutory employer.” Id. ¶ 8.
¶ 11. The situation here is similar. Defendant CP-Burlington Properties is a separate entity from Corbin & Palmer and is sued solely in its capacity as a landowner in the business of leasing this property. Similarly, the remaining defendants are sued solely in their capacities as owners and lessors of the property. Nothing in the record demonstrates that defendants, in their capacity as property owners, were ever engaged in the funeral home business. While Ms. Hanley and Mr. Palmer also served as employees of the funeral home business, they were sued only in their capacities as owners and operators of a wholly separate commercial leasing business. The fact that the landlord entities and the funeral home business had overlapping personnel is not dispositive. Because defendants, in their capacities as landowners, were in no way engaged in the funeral home business, we find they are not the virtual proprietors of Corbin & Palmer, Inc., and thus not statutory employers.
¶ 12. Landowners argue that even if plaintiffs’ suit is not exempt under the workers’ compensation laws, landowners nevertheless lacked any duty to maintain or repair the ventilation system because they had no control over the system. Further, they argue that it was Corbin & Palmer’s duty to provide a safe workplace for its employees. We have held that Vermont landlords “may be held liable for exposing their tenants to unreasonable risks of harm in the leased premises, whether or not they retain ‘control’ of the dangerous condition.” Favreau v. Miller, 156 Vt. 222, 228, 591 A.2d 68, 72 (1991). We also explicitly held in Vella that “[wjhile there certainly is overlap,” a landlord’s duty to maintain the premises is not the same as an employer’s duty to provide a safe workplace for its employees. 2003 VT 108, ¶ 14. A landlord’s duty to maintain the premises is an “independent, personal duty.” Id.
II13. Because we conclude that landowners were not the virtual proprietors or operators of Corbin & Palmer, Inc., and thus not statutory employers, we reverse the superior court’s order.
R&oersed and remanded.