210 N.W. 64 | Minn. | 1926
Elmer, not quite 15 years of age, had been employed for several months by Robinson, Straus Company, and at the time of the accident was a stock boy in the hat department on the third floor. The receiving and shipping room was in the basement and in charge *115 of the receiving and shipping clerk who had two assistants at the time in question. It was their duty to sort and check the goods received and convey them to the proper floors of the six-story building by means of a freight elevator provided for that purpose. The express as it is termed in the record — meaning the goods received by express — usually arrived about 10 o'clock in the forenoon and was distributed at once. On March 25, 1925, Elmer brought up the express for the hat department on the freight elevator and placed it in the back room of that department. Shortly thereafter his body was found at the level of the first floor crushed between the platform of the elevator and the shaft. He evidently had undertaken to return the elevator to the basement, but no one saw what he did or knew how the accident happened.
The relators contend that Elmer was doing an act wholly outside the scope of his employment at the time of the accident; and that the finding of the commission that the accident arose out of and in the course of his employment is not sustained by the evidence.
It was not a part of the duty of the stock boys on the third floor to bring up goods from the receiving room, and they were forbidden to use or operate the elevator. Nevertheless they occasionally went after the express for their department and brought it up to their floor on the elevator. That they occasionally used and operated the elevator for this purpose was evidently known to the receiving clerk who had charge of it, but seems not to have been known to the president of the company who was also the managing officer in charge of the third floor. At the time Elmer took up the express, the receiving clerk's assistants whose duty it was to take it up were both absent. Elmer had been in that department only two or three weeks and, although he had doubtless assisted in taking up the express previously, this so far as appears was the first time that he had taken it up alone. But William Schwendig, with whom he worked and who had been a stock boy in that department for several years, had gone after the express and brought it up alone at various times for a year or more preceding the accident.
The compensation act is to be liberally construed to secure to employes the benefits intended in enacting it. State ex rel. v. *116
District Court,
That the employe may have been acting in disobedience of orders at the time of the injury does not necessarily place him outside the protection of the act. Frint Motor Car Co. v. Industrial Comm.
The accident to Elmer happened in the course of his employment, Novack v. Montgomery Ward Co.
In State ex rel. v. District Court,
In Durrin v. Meehl,
In Frint Motor Car Co. v. Industrial Comm. supra, the employe was directed to perform his work in a designated place, but left it *117 to further his master's interest and was killed. He was held to be within the act.
In Hafer W.C. Co. v. Industrial Comm.
In Hartz v. Hartford Faience Co.
"What he was engaged in doing was for his master's benefit and to push on his work. If a workman depart temporarily from his usual vocation to perform some act necessary to be done by some one for his master, he does not cease to be acting in the course of his employment. He is then acting for his master, not for himself. A rule of law which put such an employee outside his usual course of employment and so deprived him of his right to compensation for an injury suffered, would punish energy and loyalty and helpfulness and promote sloth and inactivity in employees. It would certainly prove detrimental to industry, and such a spirit of disregard of the master's interest, if carried into all of the work, would in time cripple the industry."
See also Industrial Comm. v. Koppers Co.
The Industrial Commission has found that the accident to Elmer Olson arose out of and in the course of his employment, and we are of opinion and hold that the evidence is sufficient to sustain that finding. We are of opinion that the act he performed was so related to the duties he was employed to perform and was performed under such circumstances that it was permissible for the commission, as triers of fact, to find that he had not knowingly departed from the sphere of his duty to such a substantial extent as to place his act outside the scope of his employment.
The award is affirmed. *118