Gallegos v. Glaser Crandell Co.

• Decision Date: 24 June 1971
• Docket Number: Docket No. 10216,No. 2,2
• Citation: 34 Mich.App. 489,192 N.W.2d 52
• Parties: Frank S. GALLEGOS and Mary Gutierrez, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. GLASER CRANDELL COMPANY and Travelers Insurance Company, Defendants-Appellees
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

Page 52

192 N.W.2d 52

34 Mich.App. 489

Frank S. GALLEGOS and Mary Gutierrez, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. GLASER CRANDELL COMPANY and Travelers Insurance Company Defendants-Appellees.

Docket No. 10216.

Court of Appeals of Michigan, Division No. 2.

June 24, 1971.

Released for Publication Dec. 3, 1971.

J. Walter Brock, Marcus, McCroskey, Libner, Reamon, Williams & Dilley, Muskegon, for plaintiffs-appellants.

L. Roland Roegge, Smith, Haughey & Rice, Grand Rapids, for defendants-appellees.

Before R. B. BURNS, P.J., and FITZGERALD and J. H. GILLIS, JJ.

J. H. GILLIS, Judge.

Plaintiffs herein are migrant workers who were employed by defendant Glaser Crandell Company to harvest pickles in the southwestern part of the State. During that employment, and within a 2-week span, each plaintiff was injured by falling on the same exterior stairway leading to living quarters supplied for them by defendant. From a denial of individual claims for benefits under the Michigan Workmen's Compensation Act, specifically M.C.L.A. § 418.115 et seq. (Stat.Ann.1971 Cum.Supp. § 17.237(115) et seq.), leave to appeal was sought and granted.

Farm laborers such as plaintiffs herein who are compensated on a piecework basis are expressly excluded from coverage under sections (d) and (e) of the Workmen's Compensation Act. ¹ The precise question then is whether the creation of classes within the act, thereby allowing for coverage to permanent salaried or wage earning farm laborers while denying coverage to temporary piecework laborers (such as migrant workers) is such unreasonable and arbitrary discrimination as to deny the latter the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 1, § 2 of the Michigan Constitution.

Plaintiffs first contend, by way of an Amicus curiae brief, that the enactment in 1969 of M.C.L.A. § 418.115 (Stat.Ann.1971 Cum.Supp. § 17.237(115)), subsections (d) and (e), allowing coverage to certain farm laborers while excluding others, has permitted the creation of a class within a class so as to deny transient workers the coverage afforded the more stable and steadily employed farm laborers residing within the state. It is contended that such classification infringes upon plaintiffs' constitutionally guaranteed right to travel Shapiro v. Thompson (1969), 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 and Valenciano v. Bateman (D.Ariz.1971), 323 F.Supp. 600, and that where the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right is impaired or penalized, a compelling state interest must be shown in order to be consistent with the equal protection clause. Korematsu v. United States (1944), 323 U.S. 214, 65 S.Ct. 193, 89 L.Ed. 194; Bates v. Little Rock (1960), 361 U.S. 516, 80 S.Ct. 412, 4 L.Ed.2d 480; Sherbert v. Verner (1963), 374 U.S. 398, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965; Shapiro v. Thompson, Supra.

As we read it, however, Shapiro v. Thompson, Supra, deals with the effect of residence requirements which operate to deny recent migrants the receipt of those public benefits 'upon which may depend the ability of the families to obtain the Very means to subsist--food, shelter, and other necessities of life.' (Emphasis supplied.) 394 U.S. at 627, 89 S.Ct. at 1327, 22 L.Ed.2d at 611. The United States Supreme Court held that:

'(N)either deterrence of indigents from migrating to the State nor limitation of welfare benefits to those regarded as contributing to the State is a constitutionally permissible state objective.' 394 U.S. at 633, 89 S.Ct. at 1331, 22 L.Ed.2d at 614.

Similarly, in Vaughan v. Bower (D.Ariz.1970), 313 F.Supp. 37, Gaddis v. Wyman (S.D.N.Y.1969), 304 F.Supp. 717, and Valenciano v. Bateman, Supra, courts have held that indigents could not be 'fenced out' by residence requirements which served to deny those benefits essential to the preservation of life and health, I.e., 'fundamental public benefits.' We do not believe that the operation of subsections (d) and (e) of M.C.L.A. § 418.115 of the Michigan Workmen's Compensation Act serves to 'fence out' migrants by denying them the essentials of life and health. The Act applies to residents and nonresidents alike, and it cannot be said that it has 'no other purpose * * * than to chill the assertion of constitutional rights (in this instance the right to travel) by penalizing those who choose to exercise them * * *. United States v. Jackson (1968), 390 U.S. 570, 581, 88 S.Ct. 1209, 1216, 20 L.Ed.2d 138, 147.' Shapiro v. Thompson, Supra, 394 U.S. at 631, 89 S.Ct. at 1329, 22 L.Ed.2d at 613. Inasmuch as all commonlaw remedies remain intact, it does not appear that exclusion of piecework farm laborers from coverage under the Workmen's Compensation Act is an infringement on plaintiffs' constitutional right to travel.

Both parties place emphasis on the case of Mackin v. Detroit-Timkin Axle Company (1915), 187 Mich. 8, 153 N.W. 49, which held that the original total exclusion of farm laborers from the Workmen's Compensation Act was constitutional. Defendant points to that holding as precedent for the constitutionality of the present exclusion of piecework farm laborers. Plaintiffs, however, argue that since the recent enactment of M.C.L.A. § 418.115 (Stat.Ann.1971 Cum.Supp. § 17.237(115)), which repealed the former totally exclusionary section, the holding of Mackin v. Detroit-Timkin Axle Company, Supra, is no longer applicable and this Court is free to consider anew the question of denial of equal protection.

In this regard we agree. Since the Legislature has now seen fit to divide an entire class into smaller units, Mackin v. Detroit-Timkin Axle Company, Supra, is no longer controlling and this Court must independently determine whether the classifications of sections (d) and (e) of M.C.L.A. § 418.115 (Stat.Ann.1971 Cum.Supp. § 17.237(115)) are totally without reason and, therefore, invalid. However, in making such determination, we are by no means deprived of sound judicial precedent to guide us in reaching a decision.

Mackin v. Detroit-Timkin Axle Company, Supra, 24, 153 N.W. 55, as an initial guide, states that:

'The law is unquestionable that it is within the power of the Legislature to classify both employers and employees, if the classification is not fanciful or arbitrary and for reasons of public policy, is based upon substantial distinctions, is germane to the object sought to be accomplished by the act, not limited to existing conditions only, and applies impartially and equally to each member of the class.'

In Haynes v. Lapeer Circuit Judge (1918), 201 Mich. 138, 141, 142, 166 N.W. 938, 940, the Court stated that if legislation

'(F)ails to include and affect alike all persons of the same class, and extends immunities or privileges to one portion and denies them to others of like kind, by Unreasonable or arbitrary subclassification, it comes within the constitutional prohibition against class legislation.' (Emphasis supplied.)

However, the Supreme Court later clarified this in Kelley v. Judge of Recorder's Court of Detroit (1927), 239 Mich. 204, 215, 214 N.W. 316, 320:

"A statute does not violate the equal protection clause merely because it is not all-embracing. * * * A state may properly direct its legislation against what it deems an existing evil without covering the whole field of possible abuses. * * * The statute must be presumed to be aimed at an evil where experience shows it to be most felt, and to be deemed by the Legislature coextensive with the practical need; and is not to be overthrown merely because other instances may be suggested to which also it might have been applied; that being a matter for the Legislature to determine unless the case is very clear. * * * And it is not open to objection unless the classification is so lacking in any adequate or reasonable basis as to preclude the assumption that it was made in the exercise of the legislative judgment and discretion."

Further recognition of classifications and even subclassifications is found in Gauthier v. Campbell, Wyant & Cannon Foundry Company (1960), 360 Mich. 510, 513, 104 N.W.2d 182, 183, a case which the Court itself stated 'represents a tragic instance of Failure of the Michigan Workmen's Compensation Act Adequately to protect a victim of a death occasioned in the industrial process.' (Emphasis supplied.) To classify the industrial disability attributable to silicosis differently from other industrial and dust-related disabilities was, it seems, the creation of a class within a class. Yet the Supreme Court upheld the distinction and, after reiterating the standards by which statutory classification are to be tested (see Naudzius v. Lahr (1931), 253 Mich. 216, 234 N.W. 581) concluded that:

'* * * the legislature could attack one or several evils without having its statutory effort fail because it did not attack all of the evils in the field.

'Indeed, we are led to wonder whether, absent this legislative power of exception and exemption by classification, any of the great social legislation of our time could ever have been written upon the books. Certain it is that the act we deal with here is Entirely a legislative creature, and that in its original form it was far less inclusive than it is at present.' (Emphasis supplied.) Gauthier v. Campbell, Wyant & Cannon Foundry Company, Supra, 517, 104 N.W.2d 185.

Recently, in Wolodzko v. Wayne Circuit Judge (1969), 382 Mich. 528, 533, 170 N.W.2d 9, 12, the Supreme Court, in adopting the holding of McGowan v. Maryland (1961), 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393, stated that:

"State legislatures are presumed to have acted within their constitutional power despite the fact that, in practice, their laws...