26 A.2d 390 | Md. | 1942
Mattes, injured while working for the city at the Logan Field airport, has been denied compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act, Code, 1939, Art. 101, on the ground that his work was not of the extra-hazardous nature for which compensation is provided. On that ground the State Industrial Accident Commission disallowed his claim, and on the appeal below the court, after hearing the evidence, directed a verdict for the city and affirmed the disallowance. The appeal has followed.
This workman was employed, according to the evidence, to do janitor's work, which included helping with the plumbing at times, washing windows, sweeping floors, cutting grass, loading trucks, cleaning offices and emptying waste baskets, sometimes helping to get passengers to automobiles when the ground was wet, and anything else he was told to do by the general foreman. When the Highways Department was working at the new airport he filled tanks. And at times he helped a fellow laborer push planes into the hangar. He was classed by the City Service Commission as a laborer, and was so listed at the Central Pay Roll Bureau of the city. In the first report of injury and the claim for compensation he was described as a laborer. There was no classification of janitor at the airport for any employees, but the officials considered that Mattes was a laborer doing janitor's work. *581
His testimony was that while at work emptying large waste containers into smaller baskets, to be carried in a wheelbarrow to the back of the hangar to be burned, it became necessary for him to give an unusual pull to get a wire basket out, and in doing it he strained and injured his back.
The description commonly given the man's position is not decisive, for names may be used loosely. "The actuality, rather than the appellation, is the sound basis for the commission's action in determining whether an employee met with mishap in the course of an enumerated employment." Gleisner v. Gross Herbener,
There is no section specifically applying the Act to the conduct of an airport, but we may assume for the purposes of the case that the work done there, because of its similarity to the employment enumerated in Paragraph 41: "The operation of * * * vehicles propelled by gasoline," is within the comprehensive clause, Section 33, Paragraph 46, including "all extra-hazardous employments not specifically enumerated." Beasman Co. v.Butler,
Whether all workmen of a harzardous business, even those employed in non-hazardous work, are within a Workmen's Compensation Act is a question on which courts of other States have differed. See note, 83 A.L.R. 1018. But there are differences in the statutes applied. In some States the Acts contain specific clauses to include all workmen employed in a hazardous business. Matter of Europe v. Addison Amusements,
The work which Mattes was employed to do was not connected with the promotion of the hazardous work of the airport. His work came after and behind it. He cleaned up the premises, and carried off waste. Under a similar statute a watchman whose duties were merely to clean the office and keep other employees out of a tool house was held not compensable, although the business *584
was classed as hazardous. Kehoe v. Consol. Telegraph Elec.Subway Co.,
Mattes' employment, therefore, seems not to have been the hazardous one with which the statute deals, and these considerations lead to an affirmance of the judgment below.
Judgment affirmed, with costs.
MARBURY, J., dissenting.