Geltman v. Reliable Linen & Supply Co.

• Decision Date: 23 April 1942
• Docket Number: No. 17.,17.
• Citation: 25 A.2d 894
• Parties: GELTMAN v. RELIABLE LINEN & SUPPLY CO.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

25 A.2d 894

GELTMAN

v. RELIABLE LINEN & SUPPLY CO.

No. 17.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

April 23, 1942.

Appeal from Supreme Court.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act, N.J.S.A. 34:15-1 et seq., by Eleanor S. Geltman, petitioner, to recover compensation for the death of Isidore E. Geltman, employee, opposed by the Reliable Linen & Supply Company, employer. From a judgment of the Supreme Court, 127 N.J.L. 487, 23 A.2d 272, reversing judgment of New Jersey Department of Labor, 18 N.J.Misc. 423, 13 A.2d 844, awarding compensation, the petitioner appeals.

Judgment of the Supreme Court reversed.

David Roskein, of Newark (Harry Cohn, of Newark, of counsel), for appellant.

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

HEHER, Justice.

The question for decision is whether the facts as found by the Supreme Court reveal that the employee's death was due to an accident which arose out of and in the course of his employment within the intendment of R.S.1937, 34:15-7 et seq., N.J.S.A. 34:15-7 et seq. If it be resolved in the affirmative, there was error in matter of law in the dismissal of the petition for compensation interposed on behalf of the dependents.

There was an "accident" in the legislative view. The expression is used in the popular and ordinary sense and has a wide signification. Its accepted definition is "an unlooked-for mishap or untoward event which is not expected or designed." Bryant, Adm'x, v. Fissell, 84 N.J.L. 72, 86 A. 458, 460. The English Compensation Act of 1906 (6 Edw. VII, 1906, ch. 58, par. 1 (1) is the prototype of ours; and the interpretation of this common basic provision adopted by the courts of that country may well be considered in determining the legislative intent. Hall v. Doremus, 114 N.J.L. 47, 175 A. 369. Indeed, the definition approved in Bryant, Adm'x, v. Fissell, supra, is Lord Macnaghten's in Fenton v. Thorley & Co., Ltd, [1903] A.C. 443, construing the like provision of the earlier act of 1897. 60, 61 Vict. (1897), ch. 37, par. 1(1). In the later case of Trim Joint District School v. Kelly, [1914] A.C. 667, 7 B.W.C.C. 274, an assistant master of a training school for children suffered a fatal skull fracture at the hands of boys under his charge who had entered into a conspiracy to assault him in retaliation for unwelcome discipline; and the House of Lords categorized the occurrence as an accident within the purview of the statute, not the less so "merely for the reason that it was caused by deliberate violence." Viscount Haldane, L. C, read the word "designed" in Lord Macnaghten's definition as referring to "designed by the sufferer." He continued; "If the object of this statute be as wide as I gather from the study of its language, its construction must, as it appears to me, be that accident includes any injury which is not expected or designed by the workman himself. * * * To take a different view appears to me to amount, in the language of Mathew, L. J, in Challis v. L. and S. W. R. Co., [1905] 2 K.B. 154, 7 W.C.C. 23, to the reading into the Act of a proviso that an accident is not to be deemed within it if it arises from the mischievous act of a person not in the service of the employer." If, he said, the workman is the victim of "unexpected misfortune," the consequent injury is compensable, subject to the all-important limitation that the "risk should have arisen out of and in the course of the employment."

And Lord Loreburn, concurring in the judgment, stated that the term "accident" is to be construed "in the popular sense, as plain people would understand it," but also "in its setting, in the context, and in the light of the purpose which appears from the Act itself." After pointing to the variety of meanings in ordinary usage, he declared: "In short, the common meaning of this word is ruled neither by logic nor by etymology, but by custom, and no formula will precisely express its usage for all cases." Addressing himself to the argument that the employee "could not have been killed by accident because he was struck by design," he observed: "Suppose some ruffian laid a log on the rails and wrecked a train, is the guard who has been injured excluded from the Act? Is a gamekeeper who is shot by poachers excluded from the Act? There was design enough in either case, and of the worst kind. In either case I should have thought, if you looked at the nature of the man's employment, you might say he was injured by what was accident in that employment. * * * I find that to treat the word 'accident' as though the Act meant to contrast it with design would exclude from what I am sure was an intended benefit, numbers of cases which are to my mind obviously within the mischief. That makes me realize the value of the old rule about construing a remedial statute. Just as in the case of the guard or the gamekeeper, so here, this man was injured by what was accident in the employment in which he was engaged. It is not the less so that the person who inflicted the injury acted deliberately." This interpretation was followed in Reid v. British & Irish Steam Packet Co., Ltd, [1921] 2 K.B. 319, 14 B.W.C.C. 20, and in Parker v. Federal Steam Navigation Co., Ltd, [1925] 18 B.W.C.C. 469. It is of no significance in this regard that disease had rendered the heart incapable of withstanding the shock.

In the case at hand, the cause of death was a fibrillation and impairment of the blood circulation of the heart—an acute anoxemia of the heart—due to emotional and nervous shock attending the assault; and this is no less a "personal injury by accident" than if it had ensued from physical impact. Hall v. Doremus, supra. The physiological injury is as certain and definite in the one case as in the other; and the design of the statute plainly is to render compensation for the disability flowing from an accident having the prescribed relation to the employment. Vide Sigley v. Marathon Razor Blade Co., 111 N.J.L. 25, 166 A. 518.

Concededly, the accident happened in the course of the employment. The workman was engaged in the master's service when the fatal altercation occurred, so much so that negligence in the operation of his vehicle at that time would have been imputable to the master. Auer v. Sinclair Refining Co., 103 N.J.L. 372, 137 A. 555, 54 A.L.R. 623; Lewis v. National Cash Register Co., 84 N.J.L. 598, 87 A. 345. He was then proceeding, in obedience to the master's direction, to his area of service as a salesman for the purpose of making a canvass in accordance with specific instructions. The motor vehicle was his own, but it was used in the employment for a weekly sum paid by the master in addition to his wages to cover "operating expenses."

Did the accident also arise out of the employment in legislative intendment? We think so.

An accident arises out of the employment if it ensues from a risk reasonably incident thereto. To take this classification, the accident must in some sense be due to the employment. The legislative purpose was to provide for the hazard of accident within the scope of the employee's work. A risk is incidental to the employment when it belongs to or is connected with what the workman has to do in fulfilling his contract of service. And such a risk may be either an ordinary one, directly connected with the employment, or one extraordinary in character, indirectly connected therewith because of its special nature. Bryant, Adm'x, v. Fissell, supra.

In fine, there must needs be a causal connection between the accident and the employment or it does not fall into the statutory class. If the danger was one to which the employee was exposed because of the nature of his employment, the accident arose out of the employment. It is in this category if there be a causal relation between the injury and the conditions under which the work is required to be done. The service is then a contributing proximate cause; the injury is traceable to a hazard of the employment. It need not have been foreseen or expected; it suffices if the injury flowed as a rational consequence from a risk connected with the employment. Hall v. Doremus, supra. The doctrine that a tortfeasor is liable only for the natural effects of his negligent act is not applicable to this class of cases.

Hall v. Doremus, supra; McDonough v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 127 N.J.L. 158, 21 A.2d 314.

Reverting to the case of Trim Joint School District v. Kelly, supra, Lord Loreburn had this to say in disposing of the contention that "the risk of being killed by schoolboys" cannot be...