Cataldo v. Admiral Inn, Inc.

• Decision Date: 17 March 1967
• Docket Number: No. 3283,3283
• Citation: 227 A.2d 199,102 R.I. 1
• Parties: Paul V. CATALDO and Paul V. Cataldo II, p.p.a. Paul V. Cataldo v. ADMIRAL INN, INC. Eq.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 199

227 A.2d 199

102 R.I. 1

Paul V. CATALDO and Paul V. Cataldo II, p.p.a. Paul V. Cataldo v. ADMIRAL INN, INC.

Eq. No. 3283.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

March 17, 1967.

Goodman, Semonoff & Gorin, Norman G. Orodenker, Nathan W. Chace, Providence, for petitioners

Graham, Reid, Ewing & Stapleton, Edward J. Regan, Providence, for respondent.

OPINION

POWERS, Justice.

This is a respondent employer's appeal from a final decree of the workmen's compensation commission, affirming the decree of a single commissioner awarding death benefits in accordance with the applicable provisions of the workmen's compensation act.

A travel of the cause discloses that on April 13, 1964 Evelyn B. Cataldo, while in the employ of respondent, was involved in an automobile accident and died as a result thereof May 10, 1964.

On February 23, 1965 Paul V. Cataldo, her husband, brought a petition for death benefits on his own behalf and on behalf of a minor son. The full commission found that in the instant circumstances the statute made no provision for the boy and entered a decree to that effect, from which no appeal was taken. We shall treat the cause therefore as though only the petition of the husband had been considered.

At the hearing before the single commissioner it was agreed that the injuries resulting in the death of the employee Evelyn arose out of and in the course of her employment, that she was the wife of and living with petitioner, and that her average weekly wage was $115.

The petition was brought on the authority of G.L.1956, § 28-33-12, as amended, and § 28-33-13. The pertinent provisions of § 28-33-12, as amended, are as follows:

'If death results from the injury, the employer shall pay the dependents of the employee, wholly dependent upon his earnings for support at the time of his injury, or death, whichever is greater in number, a weekly payment equal to sixty per cent (60%) of his average weekly wages, earnings or salary, but not more than thirty dollars ($30.00), nor less than twenty-six dollars ($26.00) a week, for a period of five hundred (500) weeks from the date of the injury * * *.'

Section 28-33-13 provides in part:

'The following persons shall be conclusively presumed to be wholly dependent for support upon a deceased employee:

'* * *

'(b) A husband upon a wife with whom he lives or upon whom he is dependent at the time of her death.'

The respondent filed an answer denying that petitioner was in fact wholly dependent upon his wife at the time of her death and challenged the constitutionality of the conclusive presumption of such dependency as set forth in said § 28-33-13(b).

The single commissioner noted for the record the agreement of the parties on the salient facts of the compensability of the injury and matrimonial status of the parties and in light of respondent's contentions received evidence as to the extent, if any, of petitioner's dependency on his wife. In the view we take of the cause, however, no consideration of such testimony is required.

Proceeding from the undisputed facts bearing on the statutory requirements of petitioner's marital status and the compensable nature of his wife's fatal injuries, the single commissioner and on review the full commission held that petitioner was entitled to the benefits of § 28-33-12, as amended, by reason of the conclusive presumption mandated in his favor by the provisions of § 28-33-13(b). Each tribunal in turn construed the legislative declaration of 'conclusively presumed' as a statement of a substantive rule of law and not an evidentiary presumption which, as respondent correctly argues, could not be made conclusive without doing violence to the due process guarantees of the first section of art. XIV of amendments to the United States Constitution, citing Juster Bros., Inc. v. Christgau, 214 Minn. 108, 7 N.W.2d 501, Mobile, Jackson & Kansas City R.R. v. Turnipseed, 219 U.S. 35, 31 S.Ct. 136, 55 L.Ed. 78, and numerous others.

Indeed, a statutory provision which purported to establish the conclusive existence or non-existence of a fact susceptible of proof to the contrary would, if such contrary fact were material to the cause, not only be violative of due process but would constitute as well an unwarranted legislative invasion of the judicial power. Western & Atlantic R.R. v. Henderson, 279 U.S. 639, 49 S.Ct. 445, 73 L.Ed. 884. See also Howard Saving Institution v. Quatra, 38 N.J.Super. 174, 118 A.2d 121, and 4 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed.), § 1353, p. 714, and Vol. 9, § 2492, p. 292.

However, the courts and text writers alike are all but unanimous in declaring that whereas legislative mandated presumptions, evidentiary in nature, must be rebuttable and even then are valid only if there is a logical or rational connection between the fact established and the fact presumed, State v. Tutalo, R.I., 205 A.2d 137, the legislative enactment of a positive rule of substantive law, if otherwise constitutional, is not rendered invalid because expressed as a right conclusively presumed. City of New Port Richey v. Fidelity & Deposit Co., 5 Cir., 105 F.2d 348, 123 A.L.R. 1352; Ellis v. Henderson, 5 Cir., 204 F.2d 173. The guiding principle in distinguishing between an evidentiary presumption and a positive rule of substantive law is the discernment of the legislative intent of the purpose to be achieved.

From the expressed language of the sections in issue and other related provisions of the workmen's compensation act, we think that the challenged provision is declarative of a substantive rule predicated on sound public policy.

Significantly, the second or alternative clause in § 28-33-13(b) authorizes an award of death benefits as though wholly dependent to a surviving husband who, it can be shown, had been receiving actual support from an employed wife with whom he had not been living. While there is no express reference to a marital state in which the parties were living separate and apart, we conceive such condition to be the distinguishing feature of the first and second clauses. Contrasting then this qualified consideration with the absolute right conferred on a surviving husband bereft of a spouse with whom he had been making a home, we think it clear that by the terms of the first clause of said § 28-33-13(b), the legislature intended, in such a situation, to compensate a surviving husband for the loss of consortium and other conjugal blessings characteristic of a marital union, the status of which establishes it as a basic biosocial unit in our society.

In contending for the interpretation that we give to § 28-33-13, petitioner cites several cases in other jurisdictions as authority for the proposition that the conclusive presumption applicable in each such case was to be both a positive rule...