Crucible Steel Company of America v. Court of Common Pleas In and For The County of Hudson

• Citation: Crucible Steel Company of America v. Court of Common Pleas In and For The County of Hudson, 181 A. 634, 115 N.J.L. 493 (N.J. 1935)
• Decision Date: 06 December 1935
• Docket Number: 213
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court
• Parties: CRUCIBLE STEEL COMPANY OF AMERICA, PROSECUTOR, v. COURT OF COMMON PLEAS IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF HUDSON AND GUSTAV BACH, CLERK OF THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, AND ADOLPH SARIEGO, RESPONDENTS

181 A. 634

CRUCIBLE STEEL CO. OF AMERICA

v. COURT OF COMMON PLEAS IN AND FOR HUDSON COUNTY et al.

No. 213.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Dec. 5, 1935.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Adolph Sariego, opposed by the Crucible Steel Company of America, employer. To review a judgment of the Court of Common Pleas sustaining an award of the Workmen's Compensation Bureau for claimant, the employer brings certiorari.

Affirmed.

Argued October term, 1935, before CASE and BODINE, JJ.

Clarence B. Tippett, of New York City, for prosecutor.

William E. Sewell, of Jersey City, for respondents.

BODINE, Justice.

Prosecutor seeks to reverse an award made by the bureau and affirmed in the court of common pleas in a workmen's compensation case. The employee lost part of the second and third fingers of his right hand as the result of an accident at the plant of the Crucible Steel Company, where he was employed for the last eight years' as a roller's helper. The proofs indicate that the boss stopped the machine for his own purposes, telling the helper to stay until he came back. The injured man walked over to another machine to talk to a fellow worker. That machine was suddenly started up, crushing his fingers.

The trial court was justified in finding that the instructions given did not necessarily mean that the injured man should not move from the spot. The proofs do not show that workmen were forbidden to move about the room when there was no work for them to do at a particular machine where they were assigned to work. It is so customary for workmen to chat with their fellow workers when opportunity offers that the award was justified.

Perhaps the proofs were capable of the inference that there was a custom among the helpers to move about the room when a machine was stopped and chat with their fellows. It had been done before; but it seems unnecessary so to hold.

The findings of fact by the trial court are not disturbed when supported by the evidence; nor are the findings of two concurring tribunals lightly disturbed. The Workmen's Compensation Act as amended (Comp.St.Supps. § **236—1 et seq.) is remedial legislation, and recovery is not confined to the actual time the workman is engaged at his machine. Terlecki v. Strauss, 85 N.J.Law, 454, 89 A. 1023, affirmed Terlecki v. Straus, 86 N.J.Law, 708, 92 A. 1087. Cases are collected in Hanna v. Erie R. Co., 152 A. 179, 8 N.J.Misc. 829, indicating that a workman struck by an automobile while going to a toilet across a public street may recover where a custom...