127 P.2d 140 | Okla. | 1942
On the 14th day of April, 1941, J.W. Dunlap, hereinafter referred to as respondent, filed his employee's first notice of injury and claim for compensation in which he stated that while employed as a carpenter and construction foreman for the petitioner R. E. Mattison Company, he sustained an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of his employment when he fell from a scaffold and broke his right leg below the knee. The State Industrial Commission entered its award for temporary total disability and the petitioner R. E. Mattison Company and the Associated Indemnity Company, its insurance carrier, which parties are hereinafter called petitioners, seek to review the award and have presented the single specification of error that the respondent at the time he was injured was engaged in the erection of farm buildings and farm equipment within the exclusion clause of 85 O. S. 1941 § 2.
With this contention we cannot agree. Petitioners cite and rely on Wilson v. O'Donnell,
In Dorsett v. Watkins,
"A 'farm,' " within the meaning of the statute giving the landlord a lien for rent, in standard and common acceptation, means a body of land under one ownership, devoted to agriculture, either to raising crops, or pasture, or both."
Therein the court cites Williams v. C. N.W. R. Co.,
"The word 'farm' has a well-defined meaning. The Standard Dictionary defines a farm as 'a tract of land under one control or forming a single property, devoted to agriculture, stock raising, dairy produce, or some allied industry.' Worcester's Dictionary defines it as 'a tract of ground cultivated or designed for cultivation by a farmer.' Webster's Dictionary defines it to be 'a piece of ground devoted by its owner to agriculture.' In People v. Caldwell,
In O'Neill v. Pleasant Prairie Mutual Fire Ins. Co.,
In Dillard v. Webb,
Without any particular attempt to reconcile or analyze the statute involved, we refer to definitions of farms or farming in the following cases involving the Workmen's Compensation Law: Ganzer v. Chapman Barnard,
What constitutes a farm must differ under the particular statute considered or the circumstances in the particular case. We do not cite the above cases for the adoption of the specific rule announced in any case, but rather to disclose the trend of the cases.
We are convinced, however, that under no accepted definition can the tract of land and the use to which it and the buildings thereon were put in the case at bar be called a farm. We further conclude that the garage being erected at the time the respondent was injured was not within the "farm buildings and farm improvements excepted" as provided in 85 O. S. 1941 § 2.
This being the sole issue discussed and presented, we conclude that the award of the State Industrial Commission is correct and the same is sustained.
WELCH, C. J., CORN, V. C. J., and OSBORN, GIBSON, HURST, and ARNOLD, JJ., concur. RILEY, BAYLESS, and DAVISON, JJ., absent.