185 Pa. Super. 41 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1958
Opinion by
The claimant, a carpenter, was injured when he fell from a ladder in the house of the defendants, then in the course of construction. The referee denied compensation, under §104 of the Workmen’s Compensation Act as amended June 21, 1939, P. L. 520, 77 PS §22, on the ground that claimant’s employment was casual and not in the regular course of the business of the defendant Raymond C. Schurr. The board reversed and on the finding that claimant was an employe of the defendants, awarded compensation. The lower court affirmed, on its conclusion that the claimant’s employment was not casual in character. In resolving the question whether claimant is entitled to compensation under the exclusion of the above section of the Act we find it necessary to reverse the judgment entered on the award as a matter of law. Boyd v. Philmont Country Club et al., 129 Pa. Superior Ct. 135, 195 A. 156.
Raymond C. Schurr for about 44 years had been in the continuous employ of Philadelphia Transportation
He had worked, in all, but 69 hours at the time of the accident. Schurr testified that the claimant then had performed all of the work that he had been hired to do. Claimant however contended that there was still two weeks work for him on the job. After claimant left no one was hired in his place. Schurr did all of the remaining carpenter work, and the defendants have been living in the house since October 1954.
In Blake v. Wilson, 268 Pa. 469, 478, 112 A. 126, it was held that “regular course of business of the employer” has reference to “some particular occupation or employment habitually engaged in for livelihood or gain.” Schurr’s regular daily work was that of chief
In Cochrane v. Wm. Penn Hotel et al., 339 Pa. 549, 552, 16 A. 2d 43, in defining the test to be applied in determining the character of the employment, the Supreme Court said: “As to what constitutes an employment casual in character, it is obvious that the term ‘casual’ is not capable of scientific definition. Involved in it are the ideas of fortuitous happening and irregularity of occurrence; it denotes what is occasional, incidental, temporary, haphazard, unplanned. Applying it as practically as possible to the subject of employment, it may be said in general that if a person is employed only occasionally, at comparatively long and irregular intervals, for limited and temporary purposes, the hiring in each instance being a matter of special engagement, such employment is casual in character.” In the Cochrane case the claimant’s work was that of a handyman in a hotel. His employment was not casual in character since his work of performing minor repair jobs about the hotel recurred with “a fair degree of regularity” and his employer regarded him as a “permanent employee” whose duty it was to do that class of work, whenever the need for it arose. In the application of the principle of the Cochrane case the employment in the following cases was construed as not casual in character: Deviney v. J. H. France F. B. Co. et al., 339 Pa. 553, 16 A. 2d 45, in which the claimant was employed to work as a carpenter until the com
On the other hand in Butera v. Western Ice Co., 140 Pa. Superior Ct. 329, 14 A. 2d 219, the claimant was engaged to work by the day and for one single repair job of limited duration in an ice plant and was injured within one month from the date of hiring. There was no evidence that the employment under the contract of hiring related to any other work. Accordingly it was held that claimant was not entitled to compensation because of the casual character of his employment. The present appeal is ruled by the principle of the Butera case. Claimant admitted that he was employed to erect the studding. He testified: “We were to get ready for the plasterers . . . That is the only part of the operation I was supposed to do”; and further, as to the nature of the hiring: “He had the chance to lay me off any time he wanted to. That is the way he hired me. Anytime he was through with me he could lay me off.” Claimant was hired for a particular job and was injured at the end of but 69 working hours. Whether he had then completed all of the work to be done by him is of no moment, for even if there was other work for claimant which would have required two additional weeks, as he contends, the term of the
Judgment reversed and here entered for the defendants.