Higgins's Case
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- Before:
- Lummus
The first question is whether the claimant was an “Employee” under G. L. (Ter.,Ed.) c. 152, § 1, or an independent contractor. He was hired by Sears, Roebuck and Co. to install oil burners in the houses of their customers. Some customers paid Sears, Roebuck and Co. for installation, and others received installation free. Sears, Roebuck and Co. paid the claimant, upon presentation of his account, at the rate of $3 a burner and $2 a coil. One Levy, acting for Sears, Roebuck and Co., told him where to go to do work. The claimant was required to have his own automobile with which to travel to jobs at his own expense. He was one of several “service men” working for Sears, Roebuck and Co., some of whom worked on a salary basis but with similar duties. As often as three or four times a week the claimant was sent out to do service work on burners that he had not installed. On C. O. D. orders he collected money and turned it in. Whenever he finished a job he telephoned Levy for further directions or returned to the store. Rarely he did a little incidental work for a customer, not included in the installation, and received pay from the customer “on his own,” but he had little time for such work. On these facts the finding of the Industrial Accident Board that the claimant was an *347employee and not an independent contractor cannot be pronounced wrong. McAllister’s Case, 229 Mass. 193. See also McDermott’s Case, 283 Mass. 74.
The injury in the present case, however, occurred not while the claimant was working on a job, but while he was travelling on the highway in his automobile on March 5, 1932, from a finished job to the store of Sears, Roebuck and Co., in pursuance of his duty to return to the store when not otherwise assigned. His automobile caught fire without apparent reason, and that caused him to lose control of the automobile and to run into a tree, which resulted in serious bodily injury. Prior to the amendment to
Yet it is not enough to entitle the claimant to compensation, to show that he remained an employee while operating his automobile. The original workmen’s compensation act, St. 1911, c. 751, Part II, § 1, gave compensation to an employee only for a personal injury “arising out of and in the course of his employment”; and these words still remain the principal test of a compensable injury.
Where an employee works in the street, as a teamster does, a causal connection between his employment and a risk of the street is not hard to find. Keaney’s Case, 232 Mass. 532. Moran’s Case, 234 Mass. 566, explained in the dissenting opinion in Cook’s Case, 243 Mass. 572, 578, which became substantially the prevailing opinion in Colarullo’s Case, 258 Mass. 521. Gardner’s Case, 247 Mass. 308, 310. See also Mannix’s Case, 264 Mass. 584. If an employer, in performance of one of the express or implied terms of the employment, furnishes vehicular transportation to an employee, an injury during that transportation has been held to arise “out of and in the course of his employment.” Donovan’s Case, 217 Mass. 76. Gilbert’s Case, 253 Mass. 538. Vogel’s Case, 257 Mass. 3. Johnson’s Case, 258 Mass. 489, 493. Lee’s Case, 279 Mass. 357. See also Ross v. John Hancock Mutual Life Ins, Co. 222 Mass. 560; White v. *349E. T. Slattery Co. 236 Mass. 28. The street risk cases in which compensation has been denied go on the ground that an employee in an employment that requires travel in the street, when injured by a street risk to which travellers not so employed are equally exposed, fails to show a causal connection between his employment and his injury. Colarullo’s Case, 258 Mass. 521, and cases cited. Carlstrom’s Case, 264 Mass. 493. Wamboldt’s Case, 265 Mass. 300. Morse’s Case, 270 Mass. 276. In Hewitt’s Case, 225 Mass. 1, compensation was denied to a salesman injured by the overturning of an automobile in which he was riding. Plainly, the claimant would not have been entitled to compensation under the law as it existed prior to the amendment of 1927.
St. 1927, c. 309, § 3 (now part of
Decree affirmed.
The Chief Justice and Justices Crosby and Pierce are unable to agree with the interpretation given in the prevailing opinion to the words added to the earlier statute by St. 1927, c. 309, § 3, and now found in
1. No principle of law is more firmly fixed than this, that “it is an anciently established rule in the interpretation of statutes, that such a sense is to be made upon the whole statute, that no clause, sentence or word shall prove superfluous, void or insignificant, if, by any other con*351struction they may all be made useful and pertinent.” Commonwealth v. McCaughey, 9 Gray, 296, 297. That rule has been consistently followed. Baker v. Chisholm, 268 Mass. 1, 6. Libby v. New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, 273 Mass. 522, 526. Opinion of the Justices, 275 Mass. 575, 578. DeBlois v. Commissioner of Corporations & Taxation, 276 Mass. 437, 438. Paquette v. Fall River, 278 Mass. 172, 176-177. That principle has been forcibly stated in Old Colony Railroad v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 284 U. S. 552, at page 560, where it is said that the rule to be applied in the interpretation of statutes “is established by many decisions. ‘The legislature must be presumed to use words in their known and ordinary signification.’ Levy’s Lessee v. McCartee, 6 Pet. 102, 110. ‘The popular or received import of words furnishes the general rule for the interpretation of public laws.’ Maillard v. Lawrence, 16 How. 251, 261. And see United States v. Buffalo Gas Co. 172 U. S. 339, 341; United States v. First Nat. Bank, 234 U. S. 245, 258; Caminetti v. United States, 242 U. S. 470, 485. As was said in Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370, ‘the plain, obvious and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover.’” There is no way of ascertaining the meaning of a statute and effectuating the purpose of the Legislature in enacting it except by careful examination of all its words and by giving to all of them force and effect according to their correct meaning.
Before the amendment added by St. 1927, c. 309, § 3, it had been held that an employee injured while travelling upon a highway as an incident of his employment was not compensable under the workmen’s compensation act on the ground that, as all persons travelling upon streets are exposed to such hazard, the danger was not a “causative danger” “peculiar to the work,” but was a risk common to the general travelling public. Hewitt’s Case, 225 Mass. 1, 3, and cases cited. Colarullo’s Case, 258 Mass. 521, 522. The distinction between ordinary and extraordinary risks *352of the street did not enter into the discussion in those decisions or form the basis of them. Where, however, the place of employment was the street, as is that of a teamster, it had been held that an injury received on the street was causally related to the employment and was compensable under the workmen’s compensation act. Keaney’s Case, 232 Mass. 532. In the latter case it would have been of no consequence whether the injury arose from ordinary risks of the street or from exceptional and uncommon risks of the street. So long as it arose out of and in the course of the employment in the sense that it had a causal connection with the employment, it was compensable. Sponatski’s Case, 220 Mass. 526, 531. The class of employees whose place of employment was the street was by no means negligible, but included, beside teamsters and truckmen, numerous municipal employees.
It was in that state of the decisions that the General Court enacted the amendment, St. 1927, c. 309, § 3, adding to injuries received by an employee otherwise compensable under the act those “arising out of an ordinary risk of the street while actually engaged, with his employer’s authorization, in the business affairs or undertakings of his employer.” This amendment extended the workmen’s compensation act to a new class of injuries. The qualifying word “ordinary” was used. It would have been easy to omit that word if it had not been intended that meaning be given to it. An amendment making compensable injuries “arising out of a risk of the street” would have been simple. It would have been easy to interpret and apply to cases as they arise. The omission of the word “ordinary” from the amending statute would have made compensable every injury received from a risk of the street while the employee was engaged by the authorization of his employer in the latter’s business or undertakings. It must be presumed that the word “ordinary” was inserted in the statute with the purpose that it should be given effect by those charged with the duty of passing upon claims for compensation. It is enacted by
The meaning of the amendment as phrased in the statute appears so free from doubt that reference to legislative history is unnecessary. It is not without significance, however, that the General Court of 1927 had before it the report of a special commission appointed pursuant to Res. 1926, c. 36, for the purpose of investigating the effect of the workmen’s compensation act in order to ascertain and cure its defects. That report was House No. 999 of 1927. It recommended the enactment of an amendment to
2. The meaning and scope of the words added to
The case at bar is governed by the effect and by the words of the decision in Morse’s Case. That was a unanimous decision rendered by the full court less than four years ago, after ample argument, and it contains a comprehensive discussion of the precise point now raised. There was no misconception as to what was being done by the court. No arguments have been here adduced not then considered. It does not appear that the law was then “misunderstood or misapplied.” The • doctrine of stare decisis applies to the decision in Morse’s Case. It requires the interpretation of the words added to
The injury to the employee arose, as testified by him and as found by the single member, in this way: As he was driving his automobile on the street in the business of his employer “a sheet of flame came up in front of the car, both inside and out. He states he does not know what happened” after that. The finding of the reviewing board was that while the employee was driving his automobile “a sheet of flame suddenly enveloped the car and caused him to lose control of the.car,” with consequent injuries. The injury thus resulting cannot rightly be found to be one “arising out of an ordinary risk of the street,” but on the contrary was one arising from a rare, extraordinary, uncommon, and exceptional risk. Morse’s Case, 270 Mass. 276.