173 Ga. 350 | Ga. | 1931
A large number of questions are sought to be presented in the bill of exceptions in this case. Many of these are hypothetical. Other assignments of error are not in such form as to present anything for the consideration of this court. Questions affecting the unconstitutionality of certain portions of the workmen’s compensation act (G-a. L. 1920, p. 167) can not be considered, because it is a well-settled rule that one can not raise questions as to the constitutionality of an act unless he is affected thereby. In this case the rights of the plaintiff are not affected, unless the single provision which requires that all claims for compensation must be made within one year is unconstitutional or for some other reason invalid. This is true because, amidst all the confused mass of matter transmitted to this court, there stands out, as clear as' the lighthouse of Pharos, the unqualified admission of the claimant, through the mouth of counsel, that no claim was in fact filed as required by law until more than twelve month's subsequent to the injury. The judgment of the superior court, which is challenged by the bill of exceptions, is but a reiteration of the judgment of the commissioner who dismissed the proceeding before the Industrial Commission upon the ground that the commission was without jurisdiction, upon the specific ground that the claim had not been filed within the time provided by law. Any examination into the constitutionality of the workmen’s compensation act, supra, would be futile and barren of results in behalf of one to whose plea the law had shut the door and barred it by a statute of limitation. In an instance like that before us, a litigant can not be heard at all unless he has been properly admitted within the hall of justice, or if he has been properly ejected for the reason he did not have a card entitling him to admission. Section 25 of the workmen’s compensation act (Michie’s Code, § 3154(25) provides: “That the right to compensation under this act shall be forever barred, unless a claim be filed with the Industrial Commission within one year after the accident, and, if death results
The workmen’s compensation act is altogether statutory in its origin and procedure. It does not repeal the common law in actions for injuries which may be sustained by employees for which employers may be liable, but it altogether supplants the provisions of the common law as affecting employers and employees when its provisions are adopted as provided by its terms. For this reason, we are of the opinion the proceeding instituted to obtain the benefits provided by the workmen’s compensation act can not be amended or changed into an equitable proceeding or an action for damages, as is sought to be done in the present case. The workmen’s compensation act is one in which employers and employees each concede some rights allowed by the common law, in order
It appears from the record that on March 25, 1930, the at- torney for the plaintiff filed an appeal to the Industrial Commission for leave to withdraw the claim, for the purpose of filing the suit in the superior court. Instead of permitting this withdrawal, the commissiqn on April 8, 1930, two weeks later, entered the judgment of dismissal of which complaint is made in the present writ of error. Undoubtedly the plaintiff had the right to withdraw his claim; but in view of what lias already been said, the result, in at least so far as the Industrial Commission is concerned, would have been the same as that reached by the judgment of the Industrial Commission in dismissing the case for want of jurisdiction. Therefore the error, if one, is apparently harmless. It may be that where by gross fraud an employee has been prevented from filing his' claim as required under section 25 of the workmen’s compensation act, an employer might be held to have forfeited the benefits conferred by the State upon him under that act, whereby the employee was likewise released and would be remitted to his right to recover damages if the action be brought at any time within the statute of limitations. This we are not now called upon to decide.
Judgment affirmed.