185 A. 889 | N.H. | 1936
Stated in its essentials, the question is whether the workmen's compensation act applies to the ordinary employes of a store or mercantile establishment in which power driven machinery, including hoisting apparatus, is in incidental use in the conduct of its business and is in proximity to the employes' work. Although the act has been in force for twenty-five years, the question has not heretofore arisen here. And because of the differences in the scope and provisions of the legislation on the subject here and elsewhere, authority from other jurisdictions is scanty.
Specifically, the act is "only" for the benefit of "workmen engaged in manual or mechanical labor" in hazardous employment. P. L. c. 178, s. 1. Of the kinds of employment enumerated, one is "work in any shop, mill, factory, or other place" where hoisting apparatus or power driven machinery is used and at least five workmen are employed. Ib., s. 1 (II). It is the plaintiff's contention that she was a worker engaged partly at least in manual labor, that her work was in a place where an elevator, as hoisting apparatus, was in operation, and that the requisite number of fellow-servants was supplied. Relying upon the observance of the well settled rule of liberal construction in determining the range and bounds of the act, she says that she is within them.
Liberal construction of a statute does not call for a meaning beyond or outside the legislative intent. To extend legislation beyond its *206
intended field of operation is to amend it, as much as to narrow it within confines less than the field. The policy and objectives of the legislation are to be recognized with comprehensive force, and it is a part of them that there shall be no application of the legislation beyond its terms and provisions construed in the light of the policy and objectives. There is no intention of an act that its policy shall be adopted in cases and situations which its terms fairly construed do not cover and include. The policy aids in determining the extent of application, but the extent being determined, it is not to be enlarged by literal construction of the terms beyond their usual meaning. A construction adopting a meaning of the terms possibly but not probably intended carries the policy farther than was probably intended. Liberality of construction should effectuate, but not exceed, legislative intent. The main significance of the rule is the dismissal from consideration of the common-law jealousy of legislation disturbing its own policy, a jealousy leading to the formulation of rules of strict construction of legislation and in control and check of its operation. If the policy, spirit, and purpose of legislation are upheld in its construction, it is no denial of liberality of treatment to apply the rule that the language and phraseology of a statute are to be viewed in their ordinary and popular sense. "Reliance has been placed upon the beneficent purpose of the act. But, as often stated before (Lybolt v. Company,
The compensation act is designed to benefit a special class of persons. ". . . . the legislature intended . . . . that one who is injured by accident while engaged in work in which the risks are great and difficult to avoid may be compensated . . . . regardless of the cause of his injury." Boody v. Company,
This no more than restates a principle of statutory construction long established. "The two rules of construction, that the object of a statute is to be regarded, and that the whole of it is to be taken together, are decisive of this case." Barker v. Warren,
These methods and tests of construction are liberal. The general intent appearing and being followed, full scope of application is given play. To go farther and bring within the scope cases not within the intent, and brought in only by giving language a strained or technical meaning, would be a form of legislation. It is only when the terms statute which do not accord with the general intent are plainly expressed, that they prevail. Woodbury's Appeal,
The act being thus considered in the light of its broad purpose of providing for compensation for personal injuries in hazardous employments, it is clear that a salesman in a store is not a workman "engaged in manual or mechanical labor," within a fair application of the act. The wide contrast between the factory and the store in the employe's exposure to danger is to be regarded. The factory presents dangers of an extra-hazardous nature while the store has only those encountered in the ordinary paths and activities of life. The contrast receives practical recognition by a definition of workman in its customary and popular sense. Employes selling goods in a store are usually called clerks. Only in a literal sense are they workmen. The act has reference to "workmen engaged in manual or mechanical labor," thus emphasizing their calling as laborers, a term not in usage descriptive of salesmen in a store. If the salesman in a store performs some manual labor, he does not thereby become *208
a workman in the sense in which the word is customarily used. The labor being incidental to the employment of selling goods, it is not enough to signify that the employment is of a workman. "When we speak of a person doing manual labor, the mind is instantly directed to some kind of toil in which the physical predominates the mental." Arizona c. R. R. Co. v. Matthews,
While all workmen in the service of others are employes, all employes are not to be classed as workmen. It is worthy of note that the act, referring to the employer as such, refers throughout its sections to the employe as a workman. It is plain that only a certain class of employes were meant to be within the application of the act. Not employment in general, but hazardous employment in which "the risks are great and difficult to avoid," is the stated sort of employment affected by the act. No other employments than those specially described are within its bounds.
If one having a clerical position or ordinarily termed a clerk may be within the act as a workman, his work must be at a place which is also within the act. The stress of the act is upon the danger of the work, the required character of which as manual or mechanical being a subsidiary limitation. Except to show proximity by occasion to use the elevator, it is of no bearing here, as a particular case, that the plaintiff's use of the elevator at certain times was safer than that of the stairway more frequently used. But it is of notice that elevators are not alive with danger as is running machinery, and their inclusion with machinery by the act indicates their dependence upon and relation to the place where they are operated.
The work is to be performed "in any shop, mill, factory or other place" where or near which the danger of hoisting apparatus or power driven machinery lies. If places of business such as stores and offices supplied with elevator service or some limited equipment operated by mechanical power had been intended to be included, it is probable that they would have been expressly mentioned. The words "or other place" may be argued to comprehend in sweeping fashion any and all places, but the special mention of shop, mill and factory would then naturally be omitted. To specify places allied to each other excludes places not mentioned and not allied to them, in the absence of excepting reasons.
The rule of statutory construction on this point is long and well established. It received statement in Jones v. Gibson,
In the compensation act, what is meant by "other place" is a place where the kind of work is done that is done in a shop, mill, or factory, as a garage (Plourde v. Auclair,
While "the rule" of ejusdem generis "is always subject to the qualification that general words are to be construed more broadly than the specific words where such construction is clearly needed to give effect to the meaning of the legislature" (State v. Company,
A conforming view of the act was taken in Tully v. Carter,
It is suggested that the defendant's acceptance of the act and its insurance of liability have some bearing. The suggestion is illogical and specious. Only accepting employers are subject to the compensation features of the act (P. L., c. 178, s. 4), and the whole inquiry is whether, having accepted, they are liable in a case of accident. An employer not subject to the act but accepting its provisions gains no immunities. Not being subject to the act, he retains the common-law defences of assumption of risk and the fellow-servant rule, whether or not he accepts the act. It is not applicable unless its conditions are fulfilled. And the insurer cannot be liable if the employer is not, if only the employer's liability is insured. The discussion of *211
insurance in Mulhall v. Company,
In summary, the innovation of workmen's compensation and employers' liability legislation in this state was not a destruction of the common law of master and servant. It only curtailed the range of operation of the common law by its superseding force. It proclaimed a new principle of industrial relationship, but with limited application. To be given unrestricted force according to its terms within that application, it was to be given no force beyond it. Unusual danger to the life and limb of the servant is the fundamental of the policy. "The evils of the common-law remedies, which were not noticeable in the days of small and scattered shops, few employees and simple tools, became intolerable in the days of crowded factories, equipped with complicated and dangerous machinery." Mulhall v. Company,
Since the plaintiff's injury is not compensable, the defendant's other exceptions become moot.
Petition dismissed.
BRANCH, J., did not sit: the others concurred. *212