Thus the employe, prior to 1913, had a common-law action which § 33 of the compensation act took from him and which the quoted amendment restored in part. No other state has such a provision as that incorporated in this amendment, and it was left to this court to interpret its provisions, which especially in the case of subd. (b) are rather vague and uncertain. The legislative history of c. 279 throws no light whatever upon the purposes of the legislature or the extent to which it sought to restore to the employe his common-law right of action. It may be that it intended that his common-law right of action should only be eliminated in situations like those where contractors and subcontractors are engaged on the same project and their employes exposed to the hazards created by such mutual engagements. But our decisions have gone much further than that in depriving the employe of his common-law right of action, and there have been numerous sessions of the legislature since those decisions and no amendment of the law as so interpreted has been made. It would serve no useful purpose here to review all of the cases where this provision of the statute has been under consideration. Most, if not all, of them were cited in Smith v. Kedney Warehouse Co. Inc. 197 Minn. 558,267 N.W. 478, 269 N.W. 633. Perhaps the case of Rasmussen v. George Benz Sons, 168 Minn. 319, 325, 210 N.W. 75, 77,212 N.W. 20, has gone furthest in eliminating an employe's common-law right of action. In that case the plaintiff was an employe of an ice company engaged in delivering ice to the St. Francis Hotel and was injured by the negligence of one of the hotel's employes while the plaintiff was using a stairway on his return from delivering ice to the basement. It was there held that the two employers were engaged in related purposes on the premises and that the plaintiff was limited to recovery
under the act. The case was carefully considered and has since been much quoted; but in the subsequent case of Anderson v. Interstate Power Co. 195 Minn. 528, 532, 533, 263 N.W. 612, this court held squarely that the mere supplying of a product by one employer to another did not bring the employers within either clause (a) or clause (b) of the amendment, that is, the vending and delivery of supplies upon the premises of one of the employers does not amount to either a furtherance of a common enterprise or to the accomplishment of the same or related purposes. We must therefore hold that the rule announced in the Rasmussen case is modified to the extent that it does not apply in a situation such as that now before us where one employer is merely engaged in delivering a commodity to another employer. It is true that in the Anderson case the Rasmussen case is cited and distinguished and that there were other grounds upon which the case might have turned. Nevertheless the holding is squarely on the point and we think was a proper interpretation of the statute. We do not think the case before us is a proper one for the application of the doctrine of coëperative instrumentalities.
Judgment reversed.
I dissent. In my opinion the situation is nearly the same as in Seidel v. Nicollet Ave. Properties Corp. 202 Minn. 569,279 N.W. 570. All were under the compensation act, and the two employers here concerned were upon the premises where each must perform his work in the presence of the other, the same as subcontractors in the erection of a building.
I concur in the views of Mr. Justice Holt.
MR. JUSTICE HILTON, incapacitated by illness, took no part.