N & L AUTO PARTS COMPANY and Great American Indemnity Company, Petitioners, v. Raymond E. DOMAN and Florida Industrial Commission, Respondents.
Supreme Court of Florida
January 13, 1960
Rehearing Denied February 16, 1960
117 So. 2d 410
Martin Sack, Jacksonville, for respondents.
DREW, Justice.
This petition for certiorari under amended Article V of the Florida Constitution,
In certiorari proceedings under the provisions of amended Article V authorizing this Court to settle conflicts in decisions, we have consistently held that we will not look into the facts in order to determine whether a conflict exists.4 The question of a conflict is of concern to this Court only in those cases where the opinion and judgment of the district court announces a principle or principles of law that are in conflict with a principle or principles of law of another district court or this Court. Our concern is with the decision under review as a legal precedent to the end that conflicts in the body of the law of this State will be reduced to an absolute minimum and that the law announced in the decision of the appellate courts of this State shall be uniform throughout. That is the obvious purpose of the constitutional provision and the limitations of our power to review decisions of the district courts in this respect.
Finding, therefore, that in the constitutional sense there is no conflict in the mentioned decisions, the writ of certiorari heretofore issued be and the same hereby is discharged.
TERRELL, Acting C.J., and THORNAL and O‘CONNELL, JJ., concur.
ROBERTS, J., dissents.
ROBERTS, Justice (dissenting).
The opinion of Mr. Justice DREW in this case holds that, even though the facts — which were undisputed — are set out in full in the decision of the District Court of Appeal brought here for review, this court will not review such facts to determine whether the result reached by that court in the application of an admittedly correct principle of law is in conflict with the result reached by this court upon facts materially the same. This is contrary to the statement in Florida Power & Light Co. v. Bell, Fla. 1959, 113 So.2d 697, 698, that “A conflict might conceivably arise either from the adoption of opposing rules or from the application of the same principle to reach a different result upon the same facts.” (Emphasis added.)
The facts here are undisputed, and are recounted in the decision of the District Court of Appeal. They are that the claimant, while sitting in his motel room, decided to go to a movie and departed upon that purely personal mission. He sustained an injury on the motel premises upon his return thereto before he had reached his point of departure, to wit, the motel room. In holding that “claimant‘s deviation * * had been completed and came to an end when he debarked from the taxi on his return to the motor court“, the appellate court said:
“It would be hypercritical to hold that merely because claimant had deviated from the course of his employment on a completed private mission prior to the time of his injury he is barred from relief, whereas if he had not so deviated he would be entitled to the benefits of the Act. It would be equally unsound to conclude under the facts in this case that claimant‘s point of deviation occurred inside his motel
room when he decided to drive to Savannah to see the picture show, and that he could not be considered to have returned to the course of his employment until he was again safely inside the door of his room. Such holdings would not be in keeping with either the spirit or intent of the Act.” (Emphasis added.) [111 So.2d 272.]
The writer agrees that this conclusion is unsound and not within the spirit and intent of the workmen‘s compensation act. Nonetheless, in Foxworth v. Florida Industrial Commission, Fla. 1955, 86 So.2d 147, 152, (in which the writer dissented) a majority of this court held that a claimant who was sitting in the lobby of his hotel during attendance at a convention and had started to leave the lobby to go on a personal mission when he fell and was injured, was not in the course of his employment at the time of the alleged fall. This court said:
“At that time, claimant, by his own words had started to leave the lobby of the public hotel with the intention ‘to go to Lincoln Road to get something for his grandchildren.’ Therefore his activity at the time of the stroke concerned only a purely personal errand in no way connected with or beneficial to his employment. These circumstances brought him wholly within the rule that an accident is not compensable when it occurs ‘at a time when the employee was engaged in the pursuit of his own private and personal affairs.‘”
The conclusion is inescapable that the Foxworth case stands for the proposition that, as to employees on a travel status, the point of deviation, or departure, from the employer‘s business to go on a purely personal mission occurs when the decision to embark upon the personal mission is made and activity in that direction is initiated. If the claimant in the instant case had sustained the same injury on the same spot on the lawn while on his way to the movie, his injury could not have been held compensable, as one arising “in the course of” his employment, under the Foxworth decision. Yet, as noted above, the appellate court said in its decision that such a conclusion would be “unsound.” No logical distinction can be made, insofar as a claimant‘s employment status is concerned, between an injury sustained while on the way to accomplish a personal mission and one sustained on the same spot while returning from such mission. And, in my opinion, the decision of this court in the Foxworth case and the decision of the appellate court here reviewed “form patently irreconcilable precedents“, Florida Power & Light Co. v. Bell, supra, imposing upon this court the duty either to recede from the decision in the Foxworth case or to quash the decision here reviewed.
I therefore dissent.