123 A. 9 | Conn. | 1923
The defendants moved that the Commissioner permit them to prove facts from which, if proved, it must have been held, as matter of law, that the plaintiffs were employees of Fitzpatrick, an independent contractor, and not of the R. Wallace Sons Manufacturing Company, in the work they were *184 engaged upon when injured; and further, that a voluntary agreement for compensation was entered into by the defendants with Molstre on August 9th, 1921, and with Hayden on January 19th, 1922, and thereafter supplemental findings and awards were made on due notice, in the case of Molstre twice, and of Hayden once, and no claim was ever made that they were not employees of the R. Wallace Sons Company until the present motion, and no appeal was ever taken from the approval by the Commissioner of the voluntary agreements, or from these awards. Payments have been made by the Insurance Company under these agreements and awards up to November 10th, 1922. The Commissioner assumed the facts stated in each motion to be true for the purpose of the ruling, and denied the motions.
The single question to be determined is whether the agreements and awards can be reopened under General Statutes, § 5355, upon the ground that the plaintiffs were not at the time of their injuries employees of the employer against whom the awards were made, and when the parties defendants conceded the fact of the employment at the time they made the voluntary agreement and acquiesced in the subsequent awards without appeal. The Commissioner's power to modify or reopen an award is governed by General Statutes, § 5355, which provides that the award or voluntary agreement for compensation shall be subject to modification, upon the request of either party, "whenever it shall appear to the compensation commissioner that the incapacity of an injured employee has increased, decreased or ceased, or that the measure of dependence, on account of which the compensation is paid, has changed, or that changed conditions of fact have arisen which necessitate a change of such agreement or award in order properly to carry out the spirit of this chapter. *185 The commissioner shall also have the same power to open and modify an award as any court of the State has to open and modify a judgment of such court."
The circumstances detailed in the motion to reopen do not assume to state a case where the incapacity of either plaintiff has increased, decreased or ceased, or the measure of dependence changed. The conditions upon which the motion is based are those existent when these agreements and awards were made, and hence do not fall under the second ground — changed conditions — which the statute specifies as a basis for modification of the agreement or award. Grabowski v.Miskell,
The facts set forth in the motion show that the plaintiffs had no just claim for compensation against the R. Wallace Sons Company, since the work they were doing was done by them for an independent contractor and without any legal relation to this defendant company. The failure to ascertain this was due to the negligence of these defendants or their attorney or representative. This situation was like that in Day v.Welles,
In Jarvis v. Martin,
These decisions state our law authoritatively and conclusively. There is no occasion to trace the growth of this principle of our equity jurisprudence. Underlying it is the principle of universal authority whose base is public policy, and is expressed in the maximInterest reipublicoe ut sit finis litium, which we denominated in Burritt v. Belfy,
If this principle were not controlling, the course of conduct of these defendants would estop them to abandon the position deliberately taken and long assumed, because they acted upon a mistake of facts of which reasonable diligence on their part would have apprised them. Monroe Nat. Bank v. Catlin,
The defendants meet the obstacle interposed by these settled principles, by their contention that we have construed this statute with such liberality as to support their claim to reopen these awards. They point to our having likened the relation of the Commissioner to his award during the entire compensable period to that of a court over a judgment during the term at which it was rendered. Thompson v. Towle,
Nor are the defendants aided by our holding in Fair
v. Hartford Rubber Works Co.,
The Superior Court is advised in each case to dismiss the appeal and affirm the action of the Commissioner in denying the motion to set aside the voluntary agreement and awards.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.