52 A.2d 362 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1947
Argued March 10, 1947. The bureau, referee and board allowed unemployment compensation to the claimant, Perkins Dawkins. His base-year employer, Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, appealed to this court.
The board found: "1. The claimant was employed by the Sun Shipbuilding Dry Dock Company, Chester, Pa., from October 20th, 1942 until August 4th, 1945. 2. A month previous to August 4th, 1945 claimant gave his employer notice that he was going to resign for the specific purpose of going into business for himself. 3. The Monday following his resignation claimant started doing jobbing work, as a roofer. Claimant bought equipment, supplies, tools, etc., and tried to build up a paying business and was averaging about $35.00 per week. He continued in this business until November, but finally had to give it up as the man who got the material for claimant while he was in the roofing business, was unable to continue getting it for him as his son came home from the Army and he had to take care of him. This business could no longer succeed without the necessary materials and claimant was forced to abandon it." The findings of fact are supported by the evidence and are binding upon us. Unemployment Compensation Law, § 510,
The claimant was, at the time of his separation, 57 years old. He had worked three years for his base-year employer, but after the termination of the European war and when the fall of Japan was imminent he became apprehensive of his future. He felt that at his age he would encounter serious difficulty in holding his *504 employment or securing other work. As a matter of fact, according to the testimony of the employer's witness, he would have been assured of work with the Sun Company only until December, 1945. These circumstances produced the conviction that he should endeavor to start and build up an individually owned business.
The board's conclusion was: "On the basis of these Findings, the Referee properly concluded that the claimant cannot be disqualified under the provisions of Section 402 (b) of the Law. The unemployment for which claimant seeks benefits was due to the failure of a business enterprise and not to voluntarily leaving work, and for this reason he must be found eligible for benefits with respect to the provisions of the Unemployment Compensation Law."
It cannot be doubted that after his business failed claimant was unemployed within the meaning of the statutory definition of unemployment. "An individual shall be deemed unemployed with respect to any week during which he performs no services and with respect to which no remuneration is paid or payable to him, or with respect to any week of less than his full-time work if the remuneration paid or payable to him with respect to such week is less than his weekly benefit rate . . ." Id. § 4 (u),
No contention is made in respect of claimant's qualifications under § 401,
Appellant asserts that claimant is disqualified under the ineligibility section of the act which, so far as it is pertinent here, provides: "An employe shall be ineligible for compensation for any week — (b) In which his unemployment is due to voluntarily leaving work without good cause". Id. § 402,
In that context, the idiomatic phrase "due to" connotes a causal relation. It means caused by, in consequence of, or owing to. It is the equivalent to, or synonymous with, such accepted phrases as, "caused by", "resulting from", "sustained by", "sustained by means of", and "sustained in consequence of". 28 C.J.S., p. 579. It imports into unemployment compensation legislation the theory and principles of legal causation. Thus read the statute means that the disqualification applies only where the claimant's unemployment was actually caused by or resulted from his act in voluntarily leaving his employment without good cause.
Claimant did not become unemployed in consequence of leaving his employment. After he left appellant's employment he received remuneration for services rendered *506
and, as already demonstrated, he was not unemployed until his business failed. The failure of his business was the real, immediate, and moving cause of his unemployment. Leaving his employment was the first step, but only the first step, in the pathway to unemployment. It was the first in the sequence of events which resulted in his ultimate unemployment, but it was not, to borrow the language of another and analogous field of the law, the proximate cause of his unemployment. Leaving his employment was a remote cause, and therefore his unemployment was not, in the words of the act, "due to voluntarily leaving [his] work". And, unless it shall be said that a man who fails in his endeavor to establish in good faith a business for himself is culpable, it must also be said that he was "unemployed through no fault of their [his] own." Id. § 3,
Hence we do not squarely meet appellant's contention that claimant's voluntary separation to engage in his own business was not justified by a good cause. The question may linger upon the periphery of the case, but it does not lie at the center of the controversy. But, even so, the concept of good cause, which so far has been only tentatively defined,2 contains no factor which operates to deny compensation to claimant. Unless good cause is to be entirely denuded of its subjective element and judged wholly objectively, the laudable ambition to be independently self-supporting must be taken into consideration in the formulation of a definition of that flexible phrase. The most attractive feature of what we have been lately calling the American system of free enterprise is the liberty of choice open to all men. The right to choose to work for one's self in his own business *507 or to work for another is fundamental, and the law places no obstacle in the way of men to strive for what they regard an improvement of their economic environment. To the contrary, laying aside mere pedantic conceptions, it must be a good cause which animates a man to seek the fullest expression and amplest development of his highest skills and capacities, and to strive for steady employment, be it in his own business or in service for others. Whether or not an individual claimant is also motivated by good faith is naturally a relevant and the controlling factor, and this must be decided in the light of all the testimony. In this case claimant's good faith has not been impugned, nor could fault be found with his judgment if that were material.
Appellant's position would require us to hold that an employe is without good cause who, faced by an imminent lay-off, seeks economic security without recourse to the compensation law. His genuine desire to work and be self-supporting would go for nought. Cf. Brilhart Unemployment Compensation Case,
Nor can we sustain appellant's further contention that claimant forfeited his right to benefits because at the time he claimed them he was not an employe within *508
the definition of that term. Id. § 4 (h),
Decision affirmed.