Behrle v. London Guarantee & Accident Co.
| Decision Date | 16 November 1949 |
| Docket Number | No. 1892.,1892. |
| Citation | 68 A.2d 63 |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
| Parties | BEHRLE v. LONDON GUARANTEE & ACCIDENT CO., Limited, et al. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
See 69 A.2d 504.
Appeal from Superior Court, Providence and Bristol Counties; Walter Curry, Judge.
Workmen's compensation proceedings by Horace W. Behrle, employee, opposed by London Guarantee & Accident Company, Limited, insurance carrier, and Weeden T. Underwood, employer, for injuries and medical expenses. From an adverse decree, respondents appeal.
Appeal denied and dismissed, decree affirmed, and cause remanded.
Morrissey & Conley, Joseph L. Breen, Providence, for petitioner.
Greenough, Lyman & Cross, Providence, for respondent London Guarantee & Accident Co., Limited.
Arthur J. Sullivan, Newport, for respondent Weeden T. Underwood.
This is an original petition brought under the workmen's compensation act, General Laws 1938, chapter 300, by an employee against his employer and the latter's insurance carrier to obtain compensation and medical expenses by reason of an injury allegedly caused by an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. In the superior court, after a hearing on the merits of respondents' appeal from the decision of the director of labor, the prayers of the petition were granted by the trial justice and a decree was accordingly entered. From such decree the respondents duly prosecuted an appeal to this court.
The basic question in this case is one of jurisdiction. Respondents contend that the petitioner is not entitled to relief under our workmen's compensation act because at the time of the accident and injury he was engaged in a maritime activity aboard a vessel afloat on navigable waters. In other words, respondents' contention is that the petitioner's case falls squarely within the doctrine of Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 37 S.Ct. 524, 61 L.Ed. 1086, L.R.A.1918C, 451, Ann.Cas.1917E, 900, and therefore is within the exclusive admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States.
The facts are practically undisputed. Weeden T. Underwood, petitioner's employer, was a general plumbing contractor in the city of Newport. Prior to the recent war his business was confined to ordinary construction and repair work, but during the war years he also engaged in doing plumbing work as subcontractor of the Newport Shipyard on vessels which were ordinarily moored to its dock in navigable waters. Naval as well as commercial vessels were sent to the shipyard for repair. In order to carry on his work more expeditiously at the shipyard, Underwood maintained an office there with a foreman, Thomas W. Curtis, and four or five plumbers regularly assigned to that work. The petitioner was not one of those men, but as necessity required he was sent from Underwood's main office to the shipyard to do whatever plumbing work on vessels might be assigned to him by Curtis.
On December 17, 1943 petitioner reported to Curtis at the shipyard and was sent by him to the Y.M.S. 80, a mine sweeper of the United States Navy, to repair some leaky pipes in the engine room of that vessel, which was tied alongside another boat that was moored to the dock of the shipyard. Both vessels were then admittedly in navigable waters. In order to get aboard the Y.M.S. 80 the petitioner had to walk over a gangplank from the dock to the first boat and then, after stepping from the rail of that boat to the rail of the mine sweeper, jump three or four feet onto its deck. No untoward incident happened when the petitioner went to do the work assigned to him, which he completed in about two hours. On his way back, however, he was thrown and fell flat on his stomach onto the deck of the first boat when, as he was stepping from the rail of the mine sweeper to that of the other boat, the surge of a wave apparently forced the two vessels temporarily apart. There was undisputed medical evidence to the effect that petitioner suffered serious injury as a result of such a fall.
In a case like the one at bar we are governed by the rule originally laid down in Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, supra, and later affirmed in Parker v. Motor Boat Sales, Inc., 314 U.S. 244, 62 S.Ct. 221, 86 L.Ed. 184, and Davis v. Department of Labor and Industries, 317 U.S. 249, 63 S.Ct. 225, 229, 87 L.Ed. 246, unless the facts here bring it within the ‘twilight zone,’ so called, of the Davis case. It would serve no useful purpose to mention and much less to discuss in this opinion the many conflicting decisions of both federal and state courts that stem from the Jensen case. The Davis case, recognizing that ‘much serious confusion’ exists in this class of cases, apparently intended to protect an injured employee from possible injustice by a strict application of the Jensen rule in situations of ‘marginal employment’ when ‘by reason of particular facts' compensation could be sought under either federal or state law.
In our judgment the purpose of such holding was to give some flexibility to the rule of the Jensen case and thus relieve an injured employee from the hazardous burden of correctly determining at the outset the forum in which he may properly prosecute his claim. Addressing itself particularly to situations where the duties of an employee were partly on land and partly on navigable waters, the court in the Davis case said that there was ‘clearly a twilight zone in which the employees must have their rights determined case by case, and in which particular facts and circumstances are vital elements.’ (Italics ours.) The limits of the twilight zone mentioned by the court are undefined.
One must bear in mind that in the instant case the employee was injured in connection with work on a vessel of the United States Navy and not on a ship that was admittedly engaged in commerce, as in the Jensen case. In that case the supreme court reversed an award to the wife and children of the deceased employee under the workmen's compensation laws of New York on the ground that as the accident happened on navigable waters while the employee was performing a purely maritime service the case was therefore within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States. Its reason for so holding was that ‘no such legislation is valid if it contravenes the essential purpose expressed by an act of Congress, or works material prejudice to the characteristic features of the general maritime law, or interferes with the proper harmony and uniformity of that law in its international and interstate relations.’ [244 U.S. 205, 37 S.Ct. 529] In short, in the Jensen case the court was solely concerned in preserving from interference by the states the uniformity and harmony of the general maritime law which the federal constitution expressly commits to the exclusive care of the United States.
Were it not for the fact that in the case at bar the petitioner had been working on a ship of...
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