27 A.D.2d 604 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1966
Appeal by employer and its insurance carrier from an award of death benefits, appellants contending (1) that decedent’s fatal automobile accident did not arise out of and in the course of the employment and (2) that claimant widow had abandoned decedent and accordingly is not a “legal wife” entitled to benefits, within the statutory definition (Workmen’s Compensation Law, § 16, subd. 1-a). Decedent, a resident of Ithaca, for about 10 years prior to his death had been employed as a painter by the employer, a building contractor located in Ithaca, whose work was principally in Ithaca and vicinity and who, in fact, had never undertaken a job outside New York State prior to his undertaking a contract to remodel a lodge at Conrad, Pennsylvania, some 120 miles from Ithaca, from which job decedent was returning, as a passenger in an automobile owned and operated by a fellow employee on the job, when the accident causing death occurred. The work required two weeks