193 A.D. 809 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1920
The question involved in this case is .whether the State Industrial Commission has acted within its powers in directing the commutation of the awards to a widow and her infant daughter and the payment of a lump sum. There is no dispute that Edwin Lauritzen, aged forty-five years, suffered injuries on the 17th of January, 1917, resulting in his death on that day, while in the employ of the Terry & Tench Company, Incorporated, of New York city, and that his average earnings per day were $5.50. There is no question as to the amount of the award, but the appellants do insist that the State Industrial Commission erred in its order directing that the two awards, made to the widow and daughter of the decedent, be commuted and paid in a lump sum aggregating $5,258.85.
Section 25 of the Workmen’s Compensation Law (as amd. by Laws of 1915, chap. 167), which was in force when the injuries were received, provides that “ Compensation under the provisions of this chapter shall be payable periodically by the employer, in accordance with the method of payment of the wages of the employee at the time of his injury or death, and shall be so provided for in any award; but the Commission may determine that any payments may be made monthly or at any other period, as it may deem advisable; ” and it was obviously the intelligent purpose of the Legislature to continue the wage income as nearly uniform as the provisions of the law would permit, after the injury or death of the employee. Prior to the award herein, this section, so far as material, had been amended by chapter 629 of the Laws of 1919, and-the phraseology slightly changed, but in substance it remained the same. “ The evident purpose of the provisions of section 25, regulating the times of payment of compensation, was not only for the convenience of the employee and dependents by requiring the payments , to be in general made with the usual frequency of the payment of wages,” say the court in Spaduccino v. Hayes & Co. (180 App. Div. 37), “ but also to guard against the liability of unfortunate or improvident employees or dependents becoming charges upon public charity,” and in the case cited it was held that the State Industrial Commission had the power to rescind a lump-sum award and restore the periodical payments, under the provisions of section 74 of the Workmen’s Com
In the first place there is no assurance that the claimant will, if she reduces the award to possession, purchase a farm in Iowa. In the second place, while it may be accepted as a truism that the purchase of a farm in Iowa would be a good investment in the abstract, there is nothing to justify the assumption that every purchase of a farm in Iowa would prove profitable or desirable. The claimant appears to be a woman who is earning now less than ten dollars per week washing and scrubbing, which suggests the thought that she is not making the most of her opportunities; that she is lacking in
But, beyond this, and assuming that such a farm might be found, who is to know that these alleged brothers-in-law would give her sound advice, and that the proposed venture will not in the end leave her to come back into the State of New York to become a charge upon the community? Such things have . happened, and this woman in her testimony displays no such knowledge of business affairs as justifies any one in intrusting her with more than $5,000 in money outside the jurisdiction of the State of New York and its Industrial Commission. Perhaps at no time in the history of the country have there been so many “ get-rich-quick ” schemes to lure the inexperienced into futile investments, and the policy of the Workmen’s Compensation Law and every consideration of the welfare of this woman, as well as the justice which belongs to the insurance carrier, demands that this lump-sum award should be reversed, and that the claimant should be paid the compensation which
The award should be reversed and the periodical payments should be resumed.
All concur, except Cochrane and H. T. Kellogg, JJ., dissenting on the authority of Matter of Dodd v. Four Sixty-one Eighth Avenue Co., Inc. (227 N. Y. 597).
Award reversed and direction given that the periodical payments be resumed.