25 A.2d 171 | Pa. | 1942
Section 305 of the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1915, P. L. 736, as re-enacted and amended by the Act of June 21, 1939, P. L. 520, provides that an employer desiring to be exempt from insuring his liability for compensation shall make application to the Department of Labor and Industry, showing his financial ability to pay compensation, whereupon the Department, if satisfied of the applicant's financial ability, shall issue a permit authorizing such exemption; from a refusal of the Department an appeal shall lie to the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin County, in which appeal the only question shall be whether the Department abused its discretion.
United Fruit Company, for each of the twenty years preceding 1941, made application and was granted the privilege of being a self-insurer, but its similar application for the year 1941 was refused. Since the Department admits that the Company's financial ability to pay compensation is beyond question, and as such ability is the only qualification specified in the act, the Department's refusal to grant the permit would seem, on the face of it, to constitute an abuse of discretion, and the Dauphin County Court, on an appeal by the Company, so held. The Department now appeals to this court.
In the correspondence which passed between them it appears that the Department is attempting to force the Company to register in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth as a prerequisite to obtaining exemption from the duty to insure. The Department concedes, however, as of course it must, that the Company is not *175
obliged to register in Pennsylvania. It is a corporation engaged exclusively in foreign commerce, with its principal office in Boston, and it requires no authority from this state to carry on its business. Not only is this an elementary principle of constitutional law1 but it is recognized by our Business Corporation Law of 1933, P. L. 364, section 1001, which provides that a foreign business corporation need not procure a certificate of authority to do business in this Commonwealth if its entire business operations in the state are within the protection of the commerce clause of the federal constitution. While the United Fruit Company employs some three hundred persons in Pennsylvania, — stevedores, wharf laborers and a clerical office force, — some of whom work only on the land, others on both land and water, they are all engaged in activities connected with foreign commerce; the Supreme Court of the United States has held that longshoremen who load and discharge cargoes bear the same relation as the crew of the vessel to the commerce that they serve: Puget Sound StevedoringCo. v. State Tax Commission,
The Commonwealth seeks to impale the Company upon the horns of a dialectic dilemma — either that our Workmen's Compensation Act is not applicable to its employes and therefore there is no need for the Company to apply for the privilege of self-insurance; or, if they do come within the act, the Company is not entitled to any privileges or benefits thereunder unless it first registers to do business within the state. Neither of these propositions can be sustained.
The fact that an employe working within the State of Pennsylvania is engaged in interstate or foreign commerce *176
does not necessarily take him outside the range of the Workmen's Compensation Act, which applies (section 101) "to all accidents occurring within this Commonwealth." It is well settled that, in the absence of federal legislation on the subject,2 a state may, without violating the commerce clause of the federal constitution, legislate concerning relative rights and duties of employers and employes while within its borders, although engaged in interstate commerce: Valley Steamship Co.v. Wattawa,
Under Article III, section 2, of the federal constitution, the judicial power of the United States extends to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, and this impliedly vests in Congress the power to modify and supplement the general maritime law: Southern Pacific Company v. Jensen,
Since it is plain from what has been said that the United Fruit Company, notwithstanding its being engaged wholly in foreign commerce, will in numerous instances be obliged, unless it accepts common-law liability, to pay workmen's compensation under the Pennsylvania act, it necessarily follows that it may avail itself of those privileges which the act grants generally to employers who are subject to its provisions. The Company cannot be penalized or made a legal pariah within the Commonwealth merely because it refuses to do something which it is not compelled to do under the Constitution of the United States or the statute law of the state. The Department of Labor and Industry has no right to impose an arbitrary condition upon the granting of a permit for self-insurance to which the Company is entitled as of right in the absence of any question as to its financial responsibility.
The Commonwealth suggests that the Company cannot be reached in this state with legal process unless it registers. There is no basis for this apprehension, inasmuch as unregistered foreign corporations, even though engaged exclusively in interstate or foreign commerce, are not immune from the process of the local courts if they carry on business here in such sense as to manifest their presence within the state:International Harvester Company of America v. Kentucky,
Order affirmed; costs to be paid by the Commonwealth.