5 N.W.2d 743 | Wis. | 1942
The company claimed that the claimant was not its employee, but a common-law independent contractor and as such not entitled to compensation under the act. A deputy of the commission held the claimant an employee and allowed compensation. This was confirmed by the appeal tribunal, by the commission, and by the court.
To help us decide this apparently simple question we are deluged with briefs of one hundred five pages by counsel for *203 the Industrial Commission, seventy-nine pages of briefs of counsel for the company, and by two briefs by counsel amicicuriae, aggregating one hundred twenty-seven pages, not including twenty-five pages of synopses or appendices. We are also cited in the several briefs to two hundred eleven adjudicated cases, including duplicates, and to an aggregate of thirty-three in a memorandum by the Industrial Commission, and an opinion of the circuit judge. Such a mass is not helpful, and we take up consideration of the case by studying the act to the end of discovering whether it covers the claimant. So considering the question it seems to us not difficult of solution.
We shall assume that under the facts Elliott was a common-law independent contractor. But this does not necessarily bar him from being an employee under the act. His status under the act must be determined from the act itself in view of the purpose of the act as declared therein. We consider that so construing the act Elliott was an employee.
One phase of the act was considered in Wisconsin B. I.Co. v. Industrial Comm.
The main consideration in so deciding is stated on page 478 of our opinion:
"The legislature had no difficulty in saying when sec.
We applied the common-law tests used in determining Drews' status as an employee or independent contractor as those tests are employed in fixing status as a servant under the common law of master and servant and in determining status as an employee under the Workmen's Compensation Act. In determining Drews' status as a subcontractor this was correct whether it would be correct in determining that of a claimant or not, and we declined to consider in that case whether the claimant was an independent contractor at common law and as such deprived of status as an employee under the act, and left that question for decision when a case should be reached involving it. Page 481 of the opinion. Such case is now before us.
We stated above that in construing the act its purpose must be considered. Its purpose plainly appears in sec.
An employee to be entitled to compensation must, of course, as above indicated, fall within the terms of the act. The act obviously covers those employees rendering personal service who do not receive wages. Elliott's service is not among those services excluded by the act, sec.
This we consider is enough to say in explanation or justification of our instant decision. We deem it proper, however, to mention and note our disagreement with a suggestion made by counsel for the commission that amendments of the act made by the legislatures of 1939 and 1941 show the interpretation that should be given to the 1937 act. Legislatures by a later act cannot establish or affect the construction of a former act. Northern Trust Co. v. Snyder,
We are also moved to comment on the fact that counsel for the commission insert in their brief statements of an advisory committee created by the legislature as to what they meant by certain amendments of the original act which they drafted by the definition of "employment" in those amendments. What the framer of an act meant by the language used cannot be shown by testimony. Northern Trust Co. Case, supra;Casper v. Kalt-Zimmers Mfg. Co.
By the Court. — The judgment of the circuit court is affirmed, with costs to the respondents, but taxation of costs for respondents' brief will be limited to fifty pages under Rule 10.