81 Pa. Super. 403 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1923
Submitted March 15, 1923. The plaintiffs are the father and mother of Guiseppi Liberato, who while employed by the defendants was, on February 9, 1916, killed in the course of his employment, he died unmarried and without issue. The plaintiffs filed with the Workmen's Compensation Board a petition for compensation under the provisions of the Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736. The Compensation Board refused compensation on the ground that claimants were aliens, residents of Italy, and never have resided in the United States. The board based this conclusion upon section 310 of the Compensation Act which reads as follows: "Alien widowers, parents, brothers, and sisters not residents of the United States, shall not be entitled to any compensation." The claimants appealed to the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin County, which held that the above-quoted provision of the statute was invalid because in conflict with the treaty between the United States and Italy, as amended February 13, 1913, and reversed the finding of the board and referred the case back for further action in accordance with the opinion of the court. The board held a hearing de novo, found that the claimants were dependent upon the deceased employee and, in compliance with the decision of the common pleas awarded compensation, in the sum of $820. The defendants thereupon appealed to the court below, which court adhered to its former action and affirmed the award of the board, from which action we have this appeal.
The only question involved is whether or not the provision of the statute, above quoted, contravenes the treaty between the United States and the Kingdom of Italy. It was decided by the Supreme Court in Maiorano v. Baltimore Ohio R.R. Co.,
The present case is essentially distinct from an action to recover for injuries or death caused by negligence or unlawful violence. The Workmen's Compensation Act of 1915 did not take from any person the right to recover damages for injuries or death resulting from such a cause. The second section of that act made the right more secure where the party injured was an employee of the person responsible for the injury, in that it took away from the employer certain defenses which might prior to the enactment have been effective to prevent a recovery. That statute did, however, authorize the employer and employee to agree upon an entirely different system of compensation for injuries sustained in the course of the employment, and death therefrom resulting; which compensation should in no manner be dependent upon any fault or negligence of the employer. Under this system an employee can recover for an injury for which his own negligence was entirely responsible, *408
unless the injury or death be intentionally self-inflicted. The parties are left free to choose, there is upon them no compulsion. When, under the provisions of the statute, they contract that any injury sustained by the employee in the course of his employment shall be compensated in either of the ways by the law provided their rights must be determined according to the principles upon which they have agreed. The act did not deprive either employee or employer of any right except by his own consent, conclusively presumed to have been given unless withheld in the manner prescribed by the statute. When the parties accept the provisions of Article 3 of the statute, their relations become contractual, and their rights are to be determined under the provisions of that article: Anderson v. Carnegie Steel Co.,
It is argued on behalf of appellees, that while the employee may waive his own right to maintain an action for injuries, he cannot bind others, not parties to the contract, and waive their right to recover damages for his death caused by negligence, and the learned court below so held. If this contention is to prevail, then it logically follows that, for the game reason, neither widow, children or parents (whether resident citizens or nonresident aliens) are bound by the contract authorized by the statute, and that such surviving parties have the right to maintain an action and recover damages for death caused by negligence, notwithstanding the provisions of the Workmen's Compensation Act, precisely as they might have done under the preëxisting law. This would *409 plainly be the equivalent of declaring to be invalid the beneficent provisions of the statute intended to protect the interests of the dependent relatives of an employee who might be killed in an industrial accident for which the negligence of the employer was in no manner responsible. Such dependents would in every case be remitted to the uncertainty of an action at law for damages, with the consequent delay, in which the burden would be upon them to establish that the death was the result of the negligence of the employer. The argument is unsound and fails to take into consideration the only foundation for the right of parents to maintain an action to recover damages for the death of an adult son.
What the employee, on behalf of himself and relatives, waives by the contract is the right to recover damages, by an action at law, for his injury or death in the course of his employment resulting from the negligence of the employer. This contract he is authorized by the statute to make. What he acquires by the contract is the right to compensation under the statute for any injury which he may sustain in the course of his employment, and the certainty that, in case of his death from such injury, compensation shall be made to his dependents in the manner by the statute provided, and this to be in no manner dependent upon whether the injury or death resulted from any negligence or fault of his employer. The right of parents to recover damages for negligence resulting in the death of their adult son was statutory: Pennsylvania R.R. Co. v. Zebe,
These plaintiffs are not seeking to recover for a death caused by negligence or fault; they are not asserting a right within the protection of the treaty between the United States and the Kingdom of Italy. In the construction of a treaty the general rule obtains that the court is to be guided by the intention, of the parties, and if the words clearly express the meaning and intention no other means of interpretation can be employed: Ware v. Hylton,
The judgment is reversed and the record remitted for further proceedings.