76 Pa. Super. 582 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1921
Opinion by
The contention between the parties to this appeal had its inception in an accident in which the claimant suffered a serious injury. He filed a claim before the Workmen’s Compensation Board. The referee recommended an award. The board approved of the findings of the referee and made an order of compensation. The Court of Common Pleas of Washington County dismissed an appeal and affirmed the conclusion reached by the referee and the board. Then followed this appeal.
The controlling question for our determination is, did the accident occur in the course of the employment of the claimant? That question is not one purely of fact where this court would be bound by the findings of the referee confirmed by the board, but is a mixed question of law and fact. “The finding that an employee’s injury was received in an accident arising in the course of his employment is a mixed question of law and fact”: Gallagher v. Delaware, L. & W. R. R. Co., 72 Pa. Superior Ct. 128. That the claimant was for a considerable period of time before the accident in the service of the defendant company is not a matter of any dispute. He was employed as part of a clerical force at West Brownsville.
As we have seen, his actual service to his employer ended when he left the office to go to his home. Under special circumstances and conditions our courts have construed the statutory language in a liberal manner,
There was another fact present in that case, referred to in the opinion, which it seems to us has an important influence in the disposition of our question while it was
We attempted to make this plain in Spizzirri v. Krouse, 73 Pa. Superior Ct. 476, where we said: “It was not the design of the lawmaker to make the employer an insurer against the consequences of every accident that might happen to an employee during the time of his employment ; or the period that would elapse from the first moment he was employed until the instant, a day or years hence, when he ceased to work for the employer. .The accident cannot be dissociated from the employment. It need not have been a direct or necessary consequence of the employment; but it must have happened while the relation existed, during the course of the employment and not during a suspension of it.” In Kuca v. Lehigh Valley Coal Co., 268 Pa. 163, in which the opinion was also written by Mr. Justice Kephart
Tbe latest ease which has been brought to our notice is that of Strohl v. Eastern Penna. Railways Co., No. 194, of January Term, 1921, in tbe Supreme Court, in which an opinion was banded down by Mr. Justice Simpson on March 28,1921. Tbe facts in that case were unusual and have been very clearly and briefly stated in tbe opinion. Tbe claimant was primarily employed by tbe Lehigh Navigation Company. That company furnished electric current to tbe street car company, tbe defendant. Its quantity was measured by certain machinery on tbe premises of tbe Lehigh Company and tbe amount of it registered on meters which could be easily read. Desiring to have a report of tbe meter readings each evening, tbe street car company made an arrangement with tbe claimant that when be bad finished bis day’s work for tbe Lehigh company, be should enter tbe meter readings on blanks prepared for that purpose and deliver one to tbe conductor of any car operating on the street that would take him to bis home. In consideration of this slight service, be was given an employee’s pass with individual tickets attached, each of which entitled him to a ride either way between bis home and
Further considering the ease last cited and just quoted from, we have to observe that although the general relation of employer and employee between the claimant and the defendant company had been established; and although the discharge of the small service he was to render in consideration of his free ticket required him to board a car of the defendant and deliver his repqrt to the conductor of that car, it was held that when that report was delivered his service was completed and he was no longer in the course of his employment. He could continue to ride if he chose or he could leave the car as soon as he had delivered his report. If he continued to ride, that was not in furtherance of the company’s business and he then rode as a passenger and not as an employee. This conclusion is said to have been established by a long line of cited cases beginning as early as O’Don
The authority of those cases, it is declared by Mr. Justice Simpson in Strohl v. Railways Company, supra, has never been disturbed in Pennsylvania so that “The rule is too well settled to be now shaken. No case even qualifies the conclusion stated, where the employee is being transported as part of the compensation for his services, unless it is Knorr v. Railroad Company, supra, and the distinction between it and the cases above cited has already been sufficiently pointed out.” The principle which must determine whether, at a given time one who, generally speaking, was an employee of the defendant was actually in the course of his employment, or whether the course of employment had been suspended and he was being carried as a passenger, cannot and does not change because of later changes in the law as to the procedure by which he shall recover compensation, or as to the character of the defense which the employer may successfully interpose. It seems to us that the doctrine
We are of opinion the claimant failed to make out a case entitling him to compensation under the law. The award of the referee, the confirmatory action of the Workmen’s Board, and of the court below, were all the results of a misapprehension as to the true legislative intent in confining the right to compensation to those cases where the accident occurred in the course of the claimant’s employment.
The judgment of the court below is reversed and the record remitted to that court with direction to enter judgment in accordance with the principles of this opinion.