Ditch v. General Motors Corp., 84

• Decision Date: 02 April 1956
• Docket Number: No. 84,84
• Citation: 345 Mich. 178,76 N.W.2d 64
• Parties: Martha Louise DITCH, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Oldsmobile Division, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

Page 64

76 N.W.2d 64

345 Mich. 178

Martha Louise DITCH, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Oldsmobile Division, Defendant

and Appellant.

No. 84.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

April 2, 1956.

Henry M. Hogan, Detroit, by E. H. Reynolds, G. W. Gloster, Stuart McCallum, Detroit, of counsel, for defendant-appellant.

Harry F. Hittle, Lansing, Fred C. Newman, Lansing, of counsel, for appellee.

Before the Entire Bench, except BUTZEL, J.

KELLY, Justice.

Plaintiff, widow of John A. Ditch, deceased, was awarded compensation by the workmen's compensation commission. Defendant appeals.

The only question involved is whether deceased employee's injury arose out of and in the course of his employment.

The plant of General Motors Corporation, Oldsmobile Division, at Lansing, is completely enclosed by a wire fence. At the entrance gate for employees the corporation stations a plant protection man to restrict entrance to employees of the plant. In order to gain entry to the plant, each employee, upon entering the gate, is required to identify himself by exhibiting his badge.

On a dark and rainy morning, namely, November 15, 1950, about 6:05 a. m., John A. Ditch identified himself by displaying his badge, passed through the gate and proceeded toward the plant where his day's employment was to start at 6:30 a. m. After walking approximately 63 feet he was struck and killed by a railroad engine. The engine was operated on defendant's premises by the New York Central Railroad Company to deliver coal and materials to plants other than Oldsmobile.

The record establishes the fact that when employees pass the building where the plant protection personnel is stationed and enter through the gate they proceed toward their place of work through a fenced-in passageway and the said passageway required defendant, and other employees, to cross the railroad tracks.

The commission in its opinion called attention to the fact that previous to 1949, when the case of Daniel v. Murray Corporation of America was decided in 326 Mich. 1, 39 N.W.2d 229, the commission had consistently followed Brink v. J. W. Wells Lumber Co., 229 Mich. 35, 201 N.W. 222, which held that employment is not limited to the exact time when the workman reaches the scene of his labor and begins it, nor when he ceases work, but should also include a reasonable time to enter upon or leave the locality of his work and that the law extends to said employee's protection for injuries received in "approaching or leaving his place of employment by the only means of access thereto."

In the Daniel v. Murray Corporation case, supra, plaintiff had left defendant's plant, crossed a street and entered a parking lot provided by the defendant for the use of its employees. Plaintiff slipped in a hold in said parking lot and was injured.

The controlling opinion, concurred in by 5 Justices of this Court, held that the plaintiff was not entitled to compensation because the injury did not arise out of and in the course of employment. The dissenting opinion, concurred in by 3 Justices, held that the injury did occur within the course of employment.

In the prevailing opinion in the Daniel case, supra [326 Mich. 1, 39 N.W.2d 231], we commented upon the reasoning of the McNicol's case, In re McNicol, 215 Mass. 497, 102 N.E. 697, L.R.A.1916A, 306, holding:

"It is sufficient to say that an injury is received 'in the course of' the employment when it comes while the workman is doing the duty which he is employed to perform. It arises 'out of' the employment, when there is apparent to the rational mind, upon consideration of all the circumstances, a causal connection between the conditions under which the work is required to be performed and the resulting injury. Under this test, if the injury can be seen to have followed as a natural incident of the work and to have been contemplated by a reasonable person familiar with the whole situation as a result of the exposure occasioned by the nature of the employment, then it arises 'out of' the employment. But it excludes an injury which cannot fairly be traced to the employment as a contributing proximate cause and which comes from a hazard to which the workmen would have been equally exposed apart from the employment. The causative danger must be peculiar to the work and not common to the neighborhood. It must be incidental to the character of the business and not independent of the relation of master and servant. It 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 rational consequence."

In the prevailing opinion this Court also referred with approval to Haggar v. Tanis, 320 Mich. 295, 30 N.W.2d 876, wherein we held that an injury arising 'from a hazard to which the workman would have been equally exposed apart from the employment would not be compensable', and stated:

'This Court has consistently held that an injury to an employee while merely on his way to or from work, without any causal connection between his injury and his work, and without any duty to perform at that time for the employer, does not arise out of and in the course of the employment.'

The prevailing opinion distinguished the Daniel case from Favorite v. Kalamazoo State Hospital, 238 Mich. 566, 214 N.W. 229, where this Court held:

'A nurse subject to emergency calls when off duty and required to live in a 'home' on the hospital grounds, located about 20 rods from the building in which she worked, who fell on an icy walk connecting the two buildings, and was injured, while returning to the 'home' at the close of her work period, was injured in an...