Socha, Appellant, v. Metz
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
June 25, 1956
385 Pa. 632
A motorist on a non-through highway is not permitted to drive blandly or blindly into or through a blind intersection—in order to be free of contributory negligence he must have his car in such control before entering the intersection that if necessary to avoid oncoming traffic he can stop it at the entrance of the intersection.
If the cases cited and quoted above are still the law of Pennsylvania this plaintiff was clearly guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law. I would enter a judgment non obstante veredicto.
Socha, Appellant, v. Metz.
I. Raymond Kremer, with him Rush, Kremer & Maerz, for appellant.
Levy Anderson, Deputy City Solicitor, with him Israel K. Levy, Assistant City Solicitor, Jerome J. Shestack, First Deputy City Solicitor, James L. Stern, Deputy City Solicitor and Abraham L. Freedman, City Solicitor, for appellee.
The question in this case is whether the City of Philadelphia, in the trespass action here involved, waived its defense of liability for workmen‘s compensation when it did not formally raise the employer-employee relationship between it and the plaintiff‘s decedent until the plaintiff issued a mandamus execution to obtain satisfaction from the City of her judgment recovered against the City and the other defendants jointly.
The plaintiff is the widow and personal representative of Stanley A. Socha who died as a result of injuries received in a collision between a sanitation truck of the City, upon which he was riding, and an automobile operated by the original defendant, Ernest Metz. Metz joined Hugh F. Brown, the driver of the City‘s truck, and the City of Philadelphia as additional defendants. The original defendant‘s complaint against the City of Philadelphia, as additional defendant, alleged that the “collision was directly, proximately and solely due to the carelessness, recklessness and gross negligence of the servant, agent or employee of the addition defendant, City of Philadelphia, in operating its aforementioned motor vehicle” and that by reason thereof the “additional defendant, City of Philadelphia, is either solely liable to plaintiff, . . . jointly and severally liable to them with defendant, or liable to defendant . . . in whatever amounts defendant . . . may be held liable to plaintiff . . . on the causes of action declared by her. . . .”
Trial of the negligence issue and liability therefor was had which resulted in a jury‘s verdict for the plaintiff against all defendants jointly in the sum of $40,000. Motions for new trial filed by Metz and the City of Philadelphia were refused and judgment was entered on the verdict. No further motions were made, and no
Paragraph 2 of the City‘s petition to quash the writ, etc., averred “That at the time of the alleged accident, the said Stanley A. Socha, deceased, was in the employ of the City of Philadelphia as a helper on its said garbage truck, as will more fully appear in the Notes of Testimony filed in this case, which are herein incorporated by reference and made a part hereof.” The notes of the testimony taken at the trial of the tresрass action plainly reveal that, at the time the plaintiff‘s decedent received his mortal injury as a result of the collision, he was an employee of the City acting in the course of his employment.
For answer to the above-quoted averment of the City‘s petition to quash, the plaintiff merely averred argumentatively that “the allegations of paragraph two of the petition are irrelevant and immaterial for reasons hereinafter more fully set forth in this answer to said petition; that this proceeding by way of petition to quash the mandamus execution and to cause judgment against the City of Philadelphia to be marked satisfied is improper and without authority or warrant in law.”
Within some thrеe weeks of the accident, the City forwarded to the attorney for the plaintiff a compensa-
It is the City‘s contention that the plaintiff‘s decedent and the City were subject to the Workmen‘s Compensation Act; that the plaintiff could not maintain a separate action of trespass against the City; that the joinder of the City as an additional defendant was permissible only to the original defendant to protect his right of contribution from the City in the event they were held jointly liable for the accident; and that, in such circumstances, action by the City to have the judgment against it marked satisfied upon payment of its liability for compensation is the appropriate and only available procedure open to the employer City.
On the other hand, the plaintiff contends that the City‘s action is a collateral attack on the judgment entered against it and an effort to litigate and raise a defense of “limited liability” which could and should have been raised in the pleadings or at the trial of this matter or by way of a motion for judgment n.o.v. or any other proper proceeding within the term of court. In short, the plaintiff argues that the City wаived its defense of liability for workmen‘s compensation.
The court made the rule absolute and ordered (1) that the writ of mandamus execution be quashed and (2) that the judgment entered in favor of the plaintiff be satisfied of record as to the City of Philadelphia upon payment by the City to the plaintiff of a sum equal to the aggregate amount allowable by the Workmen‘s Compensation Act for the death of her husband. The plaintiff brought this appeal.
The appellant‘s contentions are without merit and obviously stem from a fundamental misconception of
An employer‘s liability to his employee for compensation under the
There is a conclusive presumption under the
It necessarily follows that the sole procedure available to the plaintiff for the recovery of damages from the employer for her husband‘s death from injuries received in the course of his employment was by virtue of the
It so happens, however, just as in the instant case, that an employer may be required to defend his employee‘s trespass action for personal injuries received in the course of his employment when the employer is summoned as an additional defendant or is sued jointly with another for such injuries. But, that procedure is for the sole and exclusive purpose of protecting the original or third-party defendant‘s right of contribution from the еmployer and does not ascribe to the em-
In Maio v. Fahs, supra, the plaintiff was an employee of the additional defendant who had been brought upon the record by the original (third-party) defendant on the allegation that the employer was “severally with him, or alone, liable to the plaintiff for the cause of action declared on in the said suit.” In approving the holding of the court below, Mr. Justice MAXEY, speaking for this court, said “though plaintiff [employee] could not issue execution or other process to collect her judgment from [the employer], . . . equitable considerations required the entry of judgment against all the defendants in order that [the original defendant‘s] right to contribution from his joint tortfeasor, [the employer], as determined by the jury‘s verdict, should not be lost or nullified: [citing cases].”
After judgment had been entered against the defendant employer in Maio v. Fahs, supra, the employer challenged it on the ground that the plaintiff‘s exclusive remedy for the wrongful death of her husband, the employee, was under the Workmen‘s Compensation Act. While the employer was held to be properly a defendant in the judgment in the employee‘s suit because of the original defendant‘s right of contribution from the defendant employer, the plaintiff, representing the deceased employee, had no right to collect from the employer on account of the judgment. As to that, this court left no doubt when it said that “It would be repugnant to the letter and spirit of the
The ruling in Maio v. Fahs, supra, was followed and applied in McIntyre v. Strausser, 365 Pa. 507, 76 A. 2d 220, which laid down a further procedural step, namely, that the fact that one of the defendants was the plaintiff‘s employer and, consequently, liable for workmen‘s compensation was not to be disclosed to the jury at the trial of the negligence action. The rationale of this ruling is obvious upon a moment‘s reflection. It would be highly prejudicial to a plaintiff employee in his action for damages for negligence for one of the defendants to show that he was liable to the plaintiff for compensation. Such proof would be likely to work to the advantage of the non-employer defendant by way of a reduced verdict.
When the plaintiff in the instant case sought to execute upon the judgment against the City in the trespass action, the City moved promptly to interpose its liability for workmen‘s compensation аs a bar to the judgment. It is of no moment to the rights of the plaintiff that the City could have moved earlier to have the judgment marked satisfied as to it.
In McIntyre v. Strausser, supra, the plaintiff was an employee of one of the defendants. He received the injuries for which he claimed damages while he was a passenger in his employer‘s car which collided with another automobile. The suit was against the employer and the driver of the other vehicle. The employer filed an answer averring that the plaintiff was his employee at the time of the accident and that his only recourse against the employer was under the
McIntyre v. Strausser plainly teaches that, in an action by an employee against his employer and a third party for damages for injuries due to negligence, the employer-employee relationship is not to be pleaded. As is well known, the intended role of a pleading is to forecast what the pleader hopes to prove at trial, there-
The City waived nothing in respect of the exclusiveness of its liability for workmen‘s compensation. It asserted the relationship of employer and employee between it and the plaintiff‘s decedent as soon as the plaintiff sought to collect from the City on the judgment in the trespass action. Prior to the entry of judgment against the City, it could not have set up its statutory liability as a bar to the plaintiff‘s common-law claim. Nor, when the case went to the jury, could it mention its economic relationship with the defendant: see McIntyre v. Strausser, supra. And, even after verdict, the City could not move for judgment n.o.v. on the ground of the employer-employee relationship. Both the Maio and McIntyre cases, supra, so held. It follows, therefore, that when the City moved to quash the writ of mandamus execution, within a day of its issuance, it acted timely to offset the judgment for which it was not liable in law to the plaintiff. Not possibly can the City be held to have waived a right, which it was not theretofore called upon or permitted to assert, even assuming the right was municipally waivable.
Nor was the employer‘s motion to quash the writ of execution in any sense a collateral attack on the judgment, as the appellant erroneously argues. The City has never assailed the validity of thе judgment but merely contends that it imposes no liability on the de-
In the instant case, the learned court below, having assumed to exercise its equitable powers in the premises, conditioned the satisfaction of the judgment on the City‘s paying to the plaintiff the aggregate amount of the award she would have received had she proceeded against the City under the provisions of the Pennsylvania
Order affirmed.
DISSENTING OPINION BY MR. JUSTICE BELL:
I must dissent because (1) I disagree with some of the facts stated in the majority opinion, and (2) with its interpretation of two prior decisions of this Court, and (3) because, without any compelling statutory or decisional authority, it produces injustice.
I disagree with the majority‘s statement that “The record . . . discloses that the employe received his fatal injuries while in the course of his employment by the City.” In the first place that question was never raised by the City either in its pleadings, or at the trial, or at any time until long after a verdict had been obtained against it and judgment entered thereon; and in the second place the majority‘s conclusion is, at best for the City, merely an inference from the evidence
If an action in trespass is brought solely against a City or any other employer who has Workmen‘s Compensation, the defendant is required to plead or to affirmatively defend on the ground of Workmen‘s Compensation: Anderson v. Carnegie Steel Co., 255 Pa. 33, 99 A. 215; Walters v. Kauffman Department Stores, Inc., 334 Pa. 233, 5 A. 2d 559; Butrin et al. v. Manion Steel Barrel Co. et al., 361 Pa. 166, 63 A. 2d 345. See to the same effect: Venezia v. Philadelphia Electric Co., 317 Pa. 557, 177 A. 25; Welsch v. Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Corp., 303 Pa. 405, 154 A. 716.
If a City is joined as an additional defendant and wishes to limit its liability to Workmen‘s Compensation, all the hitherto decided cases have likewise required that that defense be raised in the pleadings or at the trial, or that a point be reserved by the employer at the trial, for a subsequent determination of that issue: See cases hereinabove cited and Maio v. Fahs, 339 Pa. 180, 14 A. 2d 105; McIntyre v. Strausser, 365 Pa. 507, 76 A. 2d 220. This is fair and just because it enables plaintiff to meet the defense and prove (if able) that he was not covered by Workmen‘s Compensation for any one of several reasons including, inter alia, that he was not employed by the City or that he was not in the course of his employment at the time of the accident. To hold that the Maio and McIntyre cases support the present majority opinion is, I believe, erroneous.
Under the majority‘s theory, I cannot see how it will be possible for a Judge to accurately charge the jury if the additional defendant has Workmen‘s Compensation and “the issue of plaintiff‘s employment or outside the course of his employment” is raised. The majority believe, no matter how it is attempted to be
In the present case, we repeat, the issue of Workmen‘s Compensation was not raised by the pleadings; and it was not raised by the City either in its pleadings or by a proper and timely motion at trial, or by the reservation of a right to raise the question, or to litigate the issue in a subsequent proceеding; it was raised by the City for the first time, after a verdict and judgment had been entered against it and after time for appeal had expired, viz., more than 90 days after the judgment had been entered.
The effect of the majority opinion is that (a) the City, years after a judgment has been entered against it, may, if it then alleges Workmen‘s Compensation liability, have the judgment against it marked satisfied of record; and (b) the issue of whether the plaintiff was covered by Workmen‘s Compensation i.e. was in the course of his employment at the time of the accident can, in the present case and others like it, never be tried. This is not good law and it certainly is not justice.
On August 3, 1953, Stanley A. Socha, an employe of the City of Philаdelphia, while riding in a truck belonging to the City, was killed when a car operated by one Ernest Metz collided with the truck. The administratrix of Socha‘s estate brought an action in trespass under the Wrongful Death statute against Metz who, in joining the driver of the City‘s vehicle and the City as additional defendants, charged that the collision was due to the negligence of the City and that, therefore, the City was either solely or jointly and severally liable.
The plaintiff recovered a verdict of $40,000 against all defendants. The Trial Court refused the motions for a new trial filed by Metz and the City, and judgment was entered on the verdict. The plaintiff collected $15,000 from Metz‘s insurance carrier and then issued a writ of mandamus execution against the City of Philadelphia for $25,000. The City resisted the writ and filed a petition for a rule to show cause why the judgment should not be satisfied of record, asserting that since Socha was a City employee, the plaintiff could receive no more than was allowable to her under the Workmen‘s Compensation Act. The Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County sustained the rule and ordered the writ quashed upon payment by the City to the plaintiff of the amount prescribed by the
In the light of its later resistance to the claim of the plaintiff, it is strange that at no time during all the lengthy proceedings prior to the issuance of the writ of mandamus execution, did the City raise the defense of Workmen‘s Compensation. At the time of thе trial, and prior thereto, counsel for the plaintiff notified City counsel that he excluded the applicability of the
May a party defendant in a common law action withhold the expression of a clear defense throughout all the proceedings only to raise it after the litigation has terminated? I do not think so, nor do I believe that the precedents of this Court justify such a procedure. In the case of Opening of Parkway, 267 Pa. 219, 226, this Court said: “When a judgment has been obtained against а municipality, it cannot in subsequent proceedings to collect the adjudicated debt, enter defense on the merits.”
In the case of Goldstein v. Ahrens, 379 Pa. 330, 334, this Court said: “When a court of competent jurisdiction has determined a litigated cause on its merits, the judgment entered and not reversed on appeal is, as between the parties to the suit and their privies, final and conclusive with regard to every fact which might properly be considered in reaching a judicial determination and with regard to all points of law adjudged as those facts and points of law relate directly to the cause of action in litigation.”
I do not believe that the City‘s contention, that its liability is a collateral issue which did not merge in the judgment, is supportable in law. The City could have raised the defense of the applicability of the
The majority of this Court see in the cases of Maio v. Fahs, 339 Pa. 180, and McIntyre v. Strausser, 365 Pa. 507 a vindication of the City‘s position. I do not so read those cases. In my view they are completely distinguishable from the situation at bar. In Maio v. Fahs the defense of the applicability of the
“This finding and the judgment entered thereon is of no benefit to the plaintiff as against Turner & Westcott, Inc., for plaintiff‘s recovery against this additional defendant is limited by the compensation agreement.” (Emphasis supplied).
In the case of McIntyre v. Strausser, the alleged employer filed an аnswer specifically averring his liability to be under the Workmen‘s Compensation Act only. At the trial the plaintiff challenged the validity of a Workmen‘s Compensation agreement entered into with the defendant, on the ground that it had been obtained by fraud and misrepresentation. The Trial Court ruled that the dispute over the validity of the agreement was to be held in abeyance until further proceedings were had. In approving this action, we said: “On motion
“In dismissing the motion, the court also said: ‘It is our opinion that an order should be made refusing the defendant Sortino‘s motion for judgment N.O.V., without prejudice, and with the right to file a petition—and obtain a rule on the plaintiff to show cause why the judgment should not be satisfied of record.”
It is thus to be noted that in the Strausser case the issue of the applicability of the
In contradistinction to the facts in the Strausser case the City here slept on its right to introduce the defense of the
The Majority says in its Opinion that there is a “conclusive” presumption that the
The Majority fears that if the plaintiff is permitted to succeed in this appeal, this in effect permits the City to reject the provisions of the
The Majority says also that including the City as an additional defendant in the lawsuit does not assure to the employee a common law right against his employer for damages suffered in the course of employment, but the plaintiff does not so contend. What the plaintiff does assert, and with fair-handed justice, is that where an employer is brought on the record as an additional defendant, the employer, if it intends to defend on the ground that its liability is solely under the Workmen‘s Compensation Act, should preserve its right to ligate that issue by promptly and properly raising it in the pleadings. There is no burden on the plaintiff to prove that the Act is not applicable unless the employer raises the issue. Certainly if the plaintiff had sued the City directly, the City would then have been bound to raise the issue. The fact that it was brought in as an additional defendant rather than as the original defendant does not change its obligations in the respect indicated. Chief Justice STERN made this clear in the case of Sheriff v. Eisele, 381 Pa. 33, 35, where he said: “. . . an additional defendant, when joined as such, becomes immediately subject to plaintiff‘s claim in every respect and with the same force
In its argument before this Court, plaintiff‘s counsel referred to the City‘s obligations under the
I see nothing in this case which should alter the principle so often enunciated by this Court, namely, “A judgment settles everything involved in the right to recover, not only all matters that were raised, but those which might have been raised.” Myers v. S. Bethlehem, 149 Pa. 85, 91.
I accordingly dissent.