F.B. Beasman & Co. v. Butler

• Decision Date: 10 December 1918
• Docket Number: 40.
• Citation: 105 A. 409,133 Md. 382
• Parties: F. B. BEASMAN & CO. et al. v. BUTLER.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

105 A. 409

133 Md. 382

F. B. BEASMAN & CO. et al. v. BUTLER.

No. 40.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

December 10, 1918

Appeal from Superior Court of Baltimore City; Walter I. Dawkins Judge.

"To be officially reported."

Proceedings under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Ernest Butler to obtain compensation for injuries, opposed by F. B. Beasman & Co., the employer, and the United States Fidelity & Guaranty Company, insurer. There was an award, which was confirmed by the superior court of Baltimore city, and the employer and insurer appeal. Affirmed.

Argued before BOYD, C.J., and BRISCOE, BURKE, THOMAS, PATTISON URNER, and STOCKBRIDGE, JJ.

Guion Miller, of Easton (Bartlett, Poe & Claggett, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellants.

Charles W. Main, of Baltimore, for appellee.

URNER J.

The appellee, Ernest Butler, was employed as a day-laborer by F B. Beasman & Co., contractors, in the work of clearing ground for the United States military cantonment known as Camp Meade. While Butler was on his way from the sleeping quarters, provided by the contractors, to begin work at the place to which he was assigned, his left foot was run over and partly crushed by the wheel of a passing motor truck. The state Industrial Accident Commission, upon application of the injured man for compensation, and after due hearing, decided that the injury arose out of and in the course of Butler's employment, and directed weekly payments of specified amounts to be made to him by his employers and the United States Fidelity & Guaranty Company as their insurer for the period and according to the rates prescribed by statute. On appeal by the employers and insurer to the superior court of Baltimore city, the award to the claimant was confirmed as the result of the verdict of a jury in his favor. A further appeal, as permitted by law, has brought the case to this court.

The appellants complain, in part, of the refusal by the superior court to grant a prayer by which they proposed to have the jury instructed that there was no evidence in the case legally sufficient to prove that the appellee sustained personal injury through an accident "arising out of and in the course of his employment." Such an instruction could not properly have been granted under the circumstances of this case, in view of the statutory rule relating to the burden of proof in such cases, as construed and applied by this court in recent decisions. It is provided by the Workmen's Compensation Law that in all court proceedings which it authorizes the decision of the state Industrial Accident Commission "shall be prima facie correct and the burden of proof shall be upon the party attacking the same." Code art. 101, § 56. In Jewel Tea Co. v. Weber, 132 Md. 178, 103 A. 476, and in Coastwise Shipbuilding Co. v. Tolson, 132 Md. 203, 103 A. 478, where the question now under consideration was involved, the trial court was asked to rule as a matter of law that the evidence was not legally sufficient to prove that the claimant's injury arose out of and in the course of his employment, this being one of the statutory conditions for his recovery of compensation, but it was held by this court, in its affirmance of the judgments appealed from, that as the burden was on the appellant to show that the finding of the commission was incorrect, "it was for the jury to determine the questions of fact presented by the appeal, and, among them, the question whether the injury sustained by the deceased arose out of and in the course of his employment, *** and the court was not authorized to say that the appellant had met the burden imposed on it, or to assume a fact to be found by the jury."

In the Weber Case the claim was made on account of the death of a man, employed as a driver and salesman to travel through the country with a team of mules and a wagon, taking orders for and delivering goods, and who was kicked and fatally injured by one of the mules as they were being placed in a stable at the end of a day's work. The claim in the Tolson Case was by a shipyard laborer whose hand became infected as a result of being stung by an insect or pricked by some sharp object as he was in the act of lifting an old piece of piling from the sand in which it was partly imbedded. In each of those cases the question whether the accident arose out of and in the course of the employment had been decided in favor of the claimant by the state Industrial Accident Commission, and consequently the burden of proof, as provided by the statute rested upon the party appealing from that determination. ...