Chmelik v. Vana

• Decision Date: 29 September 1964
• Docket Number: No. 38343,38343
• Citation: 31 Ill.2d 272,201 N.E.2d 434
• Parties: William CHMELIK, Appellant, v. Thomas VANA, Appellee.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 434

201 N.E.2d 434

31 Ill.2d 272

William CHMELIK, Appellant, v. Thomas VANA, Appellee.

No. 38343.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Sept. 29, 1964.

Fred Lambruschi, Adam Stillo, and Joseph Stillo, Chicago (Fred Lambruschi, Herbert P. Veldenz, and Vera E. Cuthbert, Chicago, of counsel), for appellant.

No appearance for appellee.

DAILY, Justice.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the circuit court of Cook County holding that the Illinois Workmen's Compensation Act was a bar to a common-law action brought by plaintiff, William Chmelik, to recover for personal injuries allegedly resulting from the negligence of Thomas Vana, the defendant. Constitutional questions raised and passed upon in the trial court give us jurisdiction to entertain the direct appeal.

Undisputed facts reveal that plaintiff and defendant were both employees of the Speedway Manufacturing Company at a plant in northern Illinois, and that both men customarily drove to and from work and parked their vehicles in a parking lot provided by their employer for the use of its employees. At the conclusion of the work day on October 18, 1961, as plaintiff was walking across the parking lot to his car, he was struck by the automobile of defendant, who was also leaving work, and severely injured. On such date the parties and their employer were operating under and subject to the Illinois Workmen's Compensation Act, section 5(a) of which provided in pertinent part: 'No common law or statutory right to recoves damages from the employer or his employees for injury or death sustained by any employee while engaged in the line of his duty as such employee, other than the compensation herein provided, shall be available to any employee who is covered by the provisions of this Act, * * *.' (Ill.Rev.Stat.1961, chap. 48, par. 138.5(a); emphasis supplied.) We have construed this section to mean that a common-law action by an employee against a negligent coemployee is precluded if the parties come within the act and the accidental injury arose out of and in the course of the employment. O'Brien v. Rautenbush, 10 Ill.2d 167, 139 N.E.2d 222; Rylander v. Chicago Short Line Railway Co., 17 Ill.2d 618, 161 N.E.2d 812.

Within a short time after the occurrence plaintiff filed a common-law action against defendant, whose answer denied the material allegations of the complaint. Some time later, on the occasion of a pretrial conference, defendant orally raised the defense that plaintiff's sole recovery was under the Workmen's Compensation Act and, when this occurred, plaintiff, to protect himself, filed a claim for compensation benefits against the employer. Still later, on leave granted, defendant formally pleaded as an affirmative defense that the accident on the employer's premises had arisen out of and in the course of the employment of both men; that plaintiff had filed a claim against the employer for compensation benefits which claim had been settled for $9,469.71 with the approval of the Illinois Industrial Commission; and that under the law of Illinois (presumably referring to section 5(a)), plaintiff had no common-law action against defendant but was limited to his remedy under the Workmen's Compensation Act.

Answering the affirmative defense, plaintiff admitted that the parties and their employer were operating under the act, but denied that the accident had arisen out of and in the course of the employment of either man and alleged that if section 5(a) was to be construed as barring his common-law action, then its application would deny him due process and equal protection of the law. Additionally, and among other things, the answer alleged that defendant had carried a $25,000 public liability policy on his car; that he, the plaintiff, had a claim against defendant under the terms of the policy; and that to permit section 5(a) to stand as a bar to his common-law action would cause the section to violate the provisions of the State and Federal constitutions which prohibit legislation impairing the obligation of contract. See: Const. of Ill. art. II, sec. 14, S.H.A.; Const. of the U.S., art. I, sec. 10.

On the basis of such pleadings, and after an appropriate motion and hearing, the trial court entered judgment for defendant. This appeal by plaintiff has followed and he has renewed the constitutional claims made below.

Plaintiff concedes that the regulation of the employer-employee relationship may be validly accomplished under the police power of the State. (Casparis Stone Co. v. Industrial Board, 278 Ill. 77, 115 N.E. 822; New York Central Railroad Co., v. White, 243 U.S. 188, 37 S.Ct. 247, 61 L.Ed. 667.) He insists, however, that the extension of the employer-employee relation and the coverage of the Workmen's Compensation Act to occurrences on parking lots after work duties have ceased, and in such a manner to deprive him of his action against a tort feasor, is an arbitrary and unreasonable exercise of the police power which operates to deny him due process and equal protection of the law. Stated otherwise, it is plaintiff's premise that the accident here occurring on the employer's parking lot was totally unconnected with the employer-employee relationship from the standpoint of time, place, risk and causal connection, thus causing the application of the compensation act to be arbitrary and unreasonable. This, as shall be seen, is but another way of saying that the accidental injury did not arise out of and in the course of the employment, a contention which, along with plaintiff's constitutional claim, finds rejection in well-established precedents.

The decision in Cudahy Packing Co. of Nebraska v. Parramore, 263 U.S. 418, 44 S.Ct. 153, 68 L.Ed. 366, decided at a comparatively early stage in the history of the judicial testing of workmen's compensation legislation, supplies the yardstick to be applied to plaintiff's claim of a denial of due process and equal protection of the law. In that case, which presented the question whether the fourteenth amendment prevented the application of the Utah act to an accidental death occurring at a railroad crossing on a public highway that was the sole means of ingress and agress for the employees of a packing plant, it was held, en route to a conclusion that such application was not subject to the constitutional objection, that the guarantees of due process and equal protection are not violated if there is a causal connection between the death or injury and the employment, '* * * a connection substantially contributory though it need not be the sole or proximate cause.' (See also: Bountiful Brick Co. v. Giles, 276 U.S. 154, 48 S.Ct. 221, 72 L.Ed. 507.) In brief, and based upon the Parramore decision, it may be said that the application of a compensation act to a particular death or injury escapes condemnation as arbitrary, capricious or clearly unreasonable, so long as there is some substantial relationship between the employment and the death or injury. As our own act has been phrased and construed, this relationship exists where the death or injury is one arising out of and in the course of the employment, and thus the efficacy or inefficacy of plaintiff's constitutional claim necessarily depends on whether the injury here was one arising out of and in the course of the employment.

The phrases 'arising out of' and 'in the course of' the employment, which are used conjunctively in our act (Ill.Rev.Stat.1961, chap., 48, par. 138.2; see also: Christian v. Chicago & Illinois Midland Railway Co., 412 Ill. 171, 175, 105 N.E.2d 741) have been repeatedly defined by our courts with the result that many guiding principles have been established. The words 'arising out of' refer to the origin or cause of the accident and presuppose a causal connection between the employment and the accidental injury (Ceisel v. Industrial Comm., 400 Ill. 574, 81 N.E.2d 506; Math Igler's Casino, Inc. v. Industrial Comm., 394 Ill. 330, 68 N.E.2d 773,) and in order for an injury to come within the act it must have had its origin in some risk connected with, or incidental to, the employment, so that there is a causal connection between the employment and the injury. (Dunham Co. v. Industrial Comm., 16 Ill.2d 102, 156 N.E.2d 560; Chicago Hardware Foundry Co. v. Industrial Comm., 393 Ill. 294, 65 N.E.2d 778.) The injury need not have been foreseen or expected, but after the event it must appear to have had its origin in a risk connected with the employment and to have flowed from that source as a natural consequence. (Permanent Construction Co. v. Industrial Comm., 380 Ill. 47, 43 N.E.2d 557, 141 A.L.R. 1484.) Ordinarily, an injury does not arise out of the employment unless the danger causing the injury is peculiar to the work and the risk is not one to which the public generally is subjected, (Lagomarcino-Grupe Co. of Iowa v. Industrial Comm., 383 Ill. 95, 48 N.E.2d 412) however, if an employee is exposed to a risk common to the general public to a greater degree than other persons by reason of his employment, the accidental injury is said to arise out of his employment. Payne and Dolan v. Industrial Comm., 382 Ill. 177, 46 N.E.2d 925; Hinckley & Schmitt v. Industrial Comm., 391 Ill. 577, 63 N.E.2d 729; Cudahy Packing Co. of Nebraska v. Parramore, 263 U.S. 418, 44 S.Ct. 153, 68 L.Ed. 366.

The words 'in...