160 N.E. 887 | Ohio | 1927
Does Section
It is conceded that prior to January 1, 1924, the *590
contrary rule prevailed. Plaintiff in error contends, however, that, since the amendment of Section
The material portions of the articles in question, as adopted September 3, 1912, and as amended November 6, 1923, are as follows:
Section
"For the purpose of providing compensation to workmen and their dependents, for death, injuries or occupational disease, occasioned in the course of such workmen's employment, laws may be passed establishing a state fund to be created by compulsory contribution thereto by employers, and administered by the state determining the terms and conditions upon which payment shall be made therefrom, and taking away any or all rights of action or defenses from employes and employers; but no right of action shall be taken away from any employe when the injury, disease or death arises from failure of the employer to comply with any lawful requirement for the protection of the lives, health and safety of employes * * *."
Section
"For the purpose of providing compensation to *591 workmen and their dependents, for death, injuries or occupational disease, occasioned in the course of such workmen's employment, laws may be passed establishing a state fund to be created by compulsory contribution thereto by employers, and administered by the state, determining the terms and conditions upon which payment shall be made therefrom. Such compensation shall be in lieu of all other rights to compensation, or damages, for such death, injuries or occupational disease, and any employer who pays the premium or compensation provided by law, passed in accordance herewith, shall not be liable to respond in damages at common law or by statute for such death, injuries or occupational disease * * *."
Counsel for plaintiff in error points out that neither the Constitution nor the Code, prior to January 1, 1924, provided for the situation where the employe sustained injuries because of the act of a third person, not his employer. He cites in a careful and scholarly brief the statutes and decisions from a number of states, which have dealt with this situation, either by constitutional provision or legislative enactment, showing that Ohio was prior to January, 1924, and still is, one of the three states which have no specific statutory or constitutional provision defining the liability or nonliability of a third person for the injury of an employe, when the employe's employer and the third person alike are covered by the Workmen's Compensation Act. General Code, Sections 1465-37 to 1465-108.
In an extensive note in 19 A. L. R., 766, discussing Workmen's Compensation Acts as precluding *592
an action for injury or death against a third person, it is stated that, at least apart from an election to proceed under the Compensation Act, according to the weight of authority, the Compensation Act does not take away the remedy of the employe at common law or under statute against a third person. There is necessarily conflict in the decisions, owing to the different statutory provisions. Under some acts it is held that the fact that an award has been obtained from the employer, although payments may have been made thereunder, does not preclude an action by the employe against a third person whose negligence caused the injury. Book v. City of Henderson,
These decisions we shall not further discuss, because obviously they are not applicable here. They construe express legislative enactments, while the question raised by this record is not one of statutory or constitutional construction. The question which confronts us here is whether we shall read into the Constitution the provisions which plaintiff *593 in error claims must be read in because of necessary implication.
The purpose of the Workmen's Compensation Act, as stated in the Ohio Constitutional Convention Proceedings and Debates, vol. 2, p. 1346, was to "solve the differences now existing between labor and capital, * * * also to provide a definite and fixed liability on the employer, so that he knows what he will have to pay, and will prevent litigation on this subject which has proven detrimental to employer and employe and a matter of enormous and needless expense to both." Remarks of Mr. Cordes.
However, the further significant statement was made in the Constitutional debates that one purpose of the Workmen's Compensation Act is the prevention of accidents. Remarks of Mr. Cordes, volume 2, p. 1346:
"The real object of all liability and compensation laws against industrial accidents, however, is not simply the matter of providing for the needs of the injured and the dependents of those killed, but to prevent accidents * * *."
Plaintiff in error does not contend that the idea was ever advanced that a person should be exempt from liability for negligence because of the fact that he himself happened to be an employer complying with the act, and because of the further fact that the person who was injured happened to be an employe, although employed by another than the one who had injured him.
In the instant case, each company is a so-called self-insurer, under Section 22 of the act (Section 1465-69, General Code), and it could not possibly *594 be claimed that the burdens of a self-insurer run toward persons not employes of the self-insurer, but in spite of this fact, plaintiff in error urges that the benefits of the abrogation of liability run to an employer not the employer of the particular employe injured.
The fact that the workmen's compensation system was intended to prevent accidents, as well as to prevent litigation between employer and employe, militates against this theory, for to establish a nonliability in third persons without corresponding responsibility to compensate would certainly tend to create one of the very situations which was meant to be avoided.
Prior to the enactment of the constitutional amendment effective January 1, 1924, a number of nisi prius cases and two judgments of Courts of Appeals in Ohio held that the remedy of the act was not exclusive, and that, even if third persons charged with negligence, as in the case at bar, were themselves employers of employes other than the plaintiff, and had complied with the Workmen's Compensation Act, actions would lie against them for alleged negligence causing injury or death. The only adjudication of this court in which the precise question has been passed upon is the case of the TrumbullCliffs Furnace Co. v. Shachovsky,
It is the contention of the plaintiff in error here that the decision in the Shachovsky case is not applicable herein because the 1923 amendment changed the wording of the constitutional provision. It is claimed that the words, "any employer who pays the premium or compensation provided by law," in the second sentence of the provision, mean any person, natural or artificial, who comes within the definition of employer under the act, whether or not he be the employer of the particular employe who brings suit against him. It is claimed that the provision, that "Such compensation shall be in lieu of all other rights to compensation or damages for such death, injury or occupational disease," cuts off not only all rights against the employe's employer, but against all third persons.
We cannot agree with this contention. The provisions above quoted, in our judgment, are no stronger in favor of plaintiff in error's contention than the original provision in Section 35, Art. II, *596 which read, "laws may be passed establishing a state fund, * * *" and "taking away any or all rights of action or defenses from employes and employers."
In the Shachovsky case, this court construed the former constitutional and statutory enactments as not depriving an employe of an action against a third person whose negligence caused him to be injured in the course of his employment, even though he had accepted compensation under the act, and even though the third person sued was an employer who had complied with the act. All of the nisi prius cases mentioned, and the two Court of Appeals decisions, made the same holding prior to the enactment of the constitutional amendment of 1923. That amendment followed in point of time, and was influenced by, the decision of this court in the case of Ohio Automatic SprinklerCo. v. Fender,
But, even though in a number of cases it had previously been held that an employe was vot deprived under the old form of the amendment of his right against a third person, though that third person should chance to be an employer of employee, other than the plaintiff, the amendment proffered in 1923, effective January 1, 1924, contained no specific provision as to the liability or nonliability of such third person.
We are asked here to eliminate a right which the injured employe or his dependents had prior to 1924, upon the ground that such an abrogation is impliedly required by the wording of the amendment. We see nothing in the provision itself to *597 justify this conclusion. There is nothing in the record of the adoption of the amendment of 1923 to lead us to infer that any such change was intended with regard to that feature of the enactment, and it would be judicial legislation to hold otherwise.
We do not pass upon the wisdom or unwisdom of the legislation. Whatever be its defects, we cannot write into the fundamental law of the state a provision depriving a large group of citizens of the remedies which they possessed prior to the enactment of the legislation, without specific authority in the legislation itself.
In the case of the Trumbull Cliffs Furnace Co. v. Shachovsky,supra, the defendant raised no question of payment pro tanto. In that case the court stated that compensation under the act, being in the nature of occupational insurance, cannot be deducted and treated as an offset for claims for damages for wrongful injury or death. This is as true when the question of deduction or offset pro tanto is presented as it is when, as in the Shachovsky case, supra, the pleadings raise the question of complete bar by acceptance of compensation under the act. In this case both parties agreed upon the amount of $4,500 as being a fair measure of the damages if the third defense was not valid, and thus acquiesced in the proposition that this action, if successful, can only result in a recovery pro tanto.
It is usually held, even under statutes which permit proceedings against both the employer and the other persons whose negligence caused the injury, that there cannot be a double recovery, that is, to the extent that the employe recovers against one *598
he cannot recover against the other. Book v. City of Henderson,supra; Rosenbaum, Guardian, v. Hartford News Co.,
These holdings are based upon the theory that there should not be a double satisfaction for the same injury.Gambling v. Haight,
Thus in Birdsall v. Coolidge,
In the absence of statutory enactment, as stated above, the decisions from jurisdictions in which detailed legislation has been enacted, providing for a situation such as that presented upon this record, cannot squarely apply. However, the reason of the ruling controls. The common law doctrine that it is inequitable to allow a double satisfaction for the same injury was not abrogated, either expressly or impliedly, by the Workmen's Compensation Act, Section 1465-37 et seq., the purpose of which is to insure to workmen injured during their employment the compensation, as Greenleaf so aptly states it, "precisely commensurate with the injury." *599
We therefore hold that recovery in an action such as that involved herein can only be to the extent that the employe or his dependents have not been compensated under the Workmen's Compensation Act.
Judgment affirmed.
DAY, KINKADE, ROBINSON, JONES and MATTHIAS, JJ., concur.