Freiborg v. Chrysler Corp.

• Citation: 85 N.W.2d 145,350 Mich. 104
• Decision Date: 07 October 1957
• Docket Number: No. 36,36
• Parties: Victor FREIBORG, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. CHRYSLER CORPORATION, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Supreme Court of Michigan

Page 145

85 N.W.2d 145

350 Mich. 104

Victor FREIBORG, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. CHRYSLER CORPORATION, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 36.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Oct. 7, 1957.

Lacey, Junes & Doelle, Detroit, Norman J. LeVasseur, Detroit, of counsel, for defendant and appellant.

Rothe, Marston, Mazey, Sachs & O'Connell, Detroit, for plaintiff and appellee.

Before the Entire Bench.

DETHMERS, Chief Justice.

Plaintiff was employed to work in one of defendant's plants. Defendant owned a parking lot located about 200 yards from the entrance by which plaintiff gained admission to the plant. As indicated by a posted sign and established by evidence, defendant maintained the lot exclusively for automobile parking by its employees while working in that plant. Because it was necessary to arrive early in order to find a parking place on the lot, plaintiff parked his automobile there 45 minutes before his working hours for the day began. After parking and while walking on the lot enroute to the plant, he was struck by the automobile of a fellow employee. The date was June 22, 1955. This appeal is from an award to plaintiff of medical benefits and compensation for resultant injuries and disability. Defendant contends that plaintiff's injuries and disability did not arise out of and in the course of his employment and are, therefore, not compensable.

The workmen's compensation act, Part 2, § 1 (C.L.1948, § 412.1 [Stat.Ann. § 17.151]), was amended by P.A.1954, No. 175, Comp.Laws Supp.1956, § 412.1, effective August 13, 1954, which added the following:

'Every employee going to or from his work while on the premises where his work is to be performed, and within a reasonable time before and after his working hours, shall be presumed to be in the course of his employment.'

Defendant says that the amendment's presumption regarding 'on the premises' injuries is not conclusive, fades in the face of evidence, and, in the instant case, disappeared upon introduction of proofs to the contrary. The presumption, so-called, is a creature of the statute. Our duty is to arrive at the legislative intent in is creation as expressed in the statute. In such pursuit no particular charm inheres in court-attached labels such as 'conclusive', 'absolute', 'disputable' or 'rebuttable' as a guide to legislative intent. Defendant does not point to the specific proofs in the record which it claims effected the disappearance of the presumption. To follow what seems to be defendant's logic, upon any showing that plaintiff's work was to be performed at a place on the premises which he either had not yet reached or had already left when he was injured, the presumption disintegrates. That that is defendant's theory appears from the fact that there are no other proofs in the record upon which it could possibly rely as having supplanted the presumption. Such theory would leave the presumption with no field for operation except in a case where there are no proofs whatsoever available in that regard. And yet those are precisely the proofs which the amendment makes prerequisite to invoking the presumption, namely, proofs that he was 'going to or from his work while on the premises'. It would be ironical, indeed, if it were to be held that the legislature intended that the only proofs which by statute can give rise to the presumption should at one and the same time eliminate or refute it.

I cannot subscribe to the notion that the legislature intended no change by the amendment. There is a strong presumption to the contrary. Lawrence Baking Co. v. Michigan Unemployment Compensation Commission, 308 Mich. 198, 13 N.W.2d 260, 154 A.L.R. 660; Bonifas-Gorman Lumber Co. v. Michigan Unemployment Compensation Commission, 313 Mich. 363, 21 N.W.2d 163; In re Loakes' Estate, 320 Mich. 674, 32 N.W.2d 10; Packard Motor Car Co. v. Michigan Unemployment Compensation Commission, 320 Mich. 358, 31 N.W.2d 83. The amendment was not necessary for the purpose of creating a presumption that an injury arises in the course of employment in those situations in which an employee is injured while coming or going and his coming and going are a part of his duty or of the work he is paid to do, inasmuch as it was already so held, without benefit of a statutory presumption, in cases such as Kunze v. Detroit Shade Tree Co., 192 Mich. 435, 158 N.W. 851, L.R.A.1917A, 252; Stockley v. School District, 231 Mich. 523, 204 N.W. 715; Favorite v. Kalamazoo State Hospital, 238 Mich. 566, 214 N.W. 229; Wilhelm v. Angell, Wilhelm & Shreve, 252 Mich. 648, 234 N.W. 433; Wearner v. West Michigan Conference of Seventh Day Adventists, 260 Mich. 540, 245 N.W. 802; Mann v. Board of Education, 266 Mich. 271, 253 N.W. 294, and Weaver v. General Motors Corporation, 330 Mich. 404, 47 N.W.2d 665. The conclusion is inescapable that the legislative intent, in adopting the amendment, was to remedy the situation resulting from decision in Daniel v. Murray Corp. of America, 326 Mich. 1, 39 N.W.2d 229, decided in 1949, in which it was held that proof that an employee suffered an injury on the premises, while going from his work but when he was no longer actually performing it, fails to establish an injury arising out of and in the course of his employment, by providing a rule of evidence for proof that, under such circumstances, the injury does so arise. The language of the amendment is specific to that effect, applying in express terms not to one while at the place where his work is to be performed or while actually performing it, but to one 'going to or from his work while on the premises'. According to defendant, such a person is not 'in the course of his employment'. The clear intendment of the amendment is that he is. To hold otherwise would be to render the amendment meaningless. It should be held, therefore, that the plaintiff in the instant case was injured while in the course of his employment.

Why, it may be asked, does the amendment speak merely in terms of a presumption if it is not to be considered rebutted by proof that plaintiff, when injured on the premises, had not yet reached or had already left the place thereon where his work is to be performed? If not thus rebuttable, does it follow that what the statute created was not a presumption at all but a substantive right, or, if a presumption, that it is 'conclusive'. We think not, but that the door was purposely left open to rebuttal of the presumption in those situations in which compensation had theretofore been denied under decisions of this Court, namely where plaintiff was injured while doing an act serving the interests of himself or a third party, but not of his employer, as in Spooner v. Detroit Saturday Night Co., 187 Mich. 125 153 N.W. 657, L.R.A.1916A, 17; Sichterman v. Kent Storage Co., 217 Mich. 364, 186 N.W. 498, 20 A.L.R. 309; and Conklin v. Industrial trial Transport, Inc., 312 Mich. 250, 20 N.W.2d 179; or while engaged in an unprovoked assault upon another as in Horvath v. La Fond, 305 Mich. 69, 8 N.W.2d 915; or in sportive acts or horseplay as in Tarpper v. Weston-Mott Co., 200 Mich. 275, 166 N.W. 857, L.R.A.1918E, 507; Derhammer v. Detroit News, 229 Mich. 658, 202 N.W. 958; and Jones v. Campbell, Wyant & Cannon Foundry Co., 284 Mich. 358, 279 N.W. 860; or while acting contrary to the orders or directions of his employer as in Lauscher v. Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc., 327 Mich. 358, 41 N.W.2d 892, in all of which cases the plaintiff's action when injured was not an incident to his employment as it was here. Also, the legislature was undoubtedly cognizant of the fact that by taking care to create only a rule of evidence--a presumption, as a remedial device, and avoiding, as we think it did, the creation of a substantive right--a new cause of action, the amendment would be held to apply to all susequent proceedings, regardless of whether the date of injury antedated or followed the effective date of the amendment. See Ritter v. Seestedt, 212 Mich. 208, 180 N.W. 412, in which this Court upheld application of a newly enacted statutory presumption of fraud to a pre-existing cause of action; see, also, Rookledge v. Garwood, 340 Mich. 444, 65 N.W.2d 785, in which this Court held that the workmen's compensation act is remedial legislation, that when an amendment thereto restored a common-law remedy lost when the act was adopted no vested right was destroyed, no new cause of action was created and the amendment was applicable to a cause of action which antedated it.

I am not impressed by defendant's argument that while plaintiff was on the parking lot he was not, in the language of the statute, 'on the premises where his work is to be performed'. Whether or not the parking lot was immediately adjacent to or a part of the same property on which the plant stood seems to me of no moment. The lot was in the proximity of and used as an adjunct to the plant in which plaintiff worked and it was furnished by defendant to plaintiff and his fellow employees for parking their automobiles as an incident to their employment in the plant. For the purposes of the amendment, it should be considered as part of the premises where plaintiff's work is to be performed.

Finally, defendant stresses that the amendment provides only for a presumption that an employee is 'in the course of his employment' but not that his injury arises 'out of his employment'. So, says defendant, even if it be conceded that plaintiff, when injured, was in the course of his employment, the award must fail because there is no proof that his injury arose out of his employment and the amendment supplies no presumption in that regard. Here again, as was true of defendant's contention that the 'in the course of' presumption was evaporated by the evidence in the record, if it were to be held that, despite the presumption that an employee was in the course of employment when injured, his injuries do not arise out of his employment if they were sustained on the way to or from...