Blocton Cahaba Coal Co. v. Campbell

• Decision Date: 16 May 1929
• Docket Number: 2 Div. 942.
• Parties: BLOCTON CAHABA COAL CO. v. CAMPBELL.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

122 So. 806

219 Ala. 529

BLOCTON CAHABA COAL CO. v. CAMPBELL.

2 Div. 942.

Supreme Court of Alabama

May 16, 1929

Rehearing Denied June 13, 1929.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Bibb County; Thomas E. Knight, Judge.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Ollie Campbell against the Blocton Cahaba Coal Company to recover compensation on account of the death of petitioner's husband, an employé. Judgment awarding compensation, and the employer brings certiorari. Writ denied.

David S. Anderson and W. M. Neal, both of Birmingham, and Jerome T Fuller, of Centreville, for appellant.

Windham & Countryman, of Birmingham, for appellee.

ANDERSON C.J.

All other essential facts to a recovery not being questioned, the one and only issue for this court to decide is whether or not the deceased, when he received the injuries resulting in death, was acting within the line or scope of his employment. As stated in brief of counsel for the defendant, "Was the accident, whereby the deceased was killed, an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment?"

The intestate was employed to dig coal in a certain room and had caused an explosion to loosen the same, retiring before the explosion, but as soon as it was over returned to the room his place of work, to resume digging, but before doing so and before the gas had been removed his unguarded lamp produced an explosion from which he received burns resulting in his death. It may be conceded that he returned to his work, or room, in violation of a general order of his foreman not to do so until it had been made safe, as well as a rule of the defendant, which was known to him, forbidding his doing so until notified by a foreman or another that the gas had been removed and the room was made safe; yet this would not render his act in returning to the work, for which he had been employed to do and was doing before the explosion, beyond the course or scope of his employment.

The court in Ex parte Woodward Iron Co., 212 Ala. 220, 102 So 103, made a distinction between a mere inadvertent violation of a rule and the wanton or intentional violation of same in the determination as to whether or not said violation amounted to willful misconduct as dealt with in the statute, but did not hold or intimate that the violation of same, though amounting to willful misconduct, would necessarily remove the employé beyond the course of his employment, notwithstanding in the violation of same he was engaged in or attempting to do the identical thing he was employed to do. The deceased here had not abandoned the work he was employed to do, but was attempting to resume same, and the rule or order violated merely forbade a premature return to the work, or doing so except under certain conditions. He did not go to a prohibited zone or engage in work or an act that was foreign to his employment.

We think the rule as quoted by counsel from Honnold on Workmen's Compensation, p. 390, § 113, is correct and demonstrates that the disobedience to the rule in question did not remove him...