Guerise v. Decker & Canning Company

• Decision Date: 19 April 1932
• Citation: Guerise v. Decker & Canning Company, 159 A. 815, 109 N.J.L. 8 (N.J. 1932)
• Docket Number: 257
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court
• Parties: PAUL GUERISE, PETITIONER-RESPONDENT IN CERTIORARI, v. DECKER & CANNING COMPANY, DEFENDANT-PROSECUTOR IN CERTIORARI

159 A. 815

GUERISE

v. DECKER & CANNING CO.

No. 257.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

April 19, 1932.

Syllabus by the Court.

A workman employed on a road building job, who was instructed by his employer to take orders from the foreman, was not bound by undisclosed instructions to the foreman limiting the use of the trucks used in the work as to time and occasion, nor by undisclosed conditions of the contract between the employer and the truck owner; and where the workman saw the trucks about the work, saw the foreman dictating their movements and operation, he was justified in following the express direction of the foreman to ride home in a designated truck, and an injury suffered by him in the course of that ride arose out of and in the course of his employment (Comp. St. Supp. § **236—1).

Certiorari to Court of Common Pleas, Union County.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Paul Guerise, employee, against the Decker & Canning Company, employer. To review a judgment of the common pleas court, affirming a judgment of the Workmen's Compensation Bureau in favor of the employee, the employer brings certiorari.

Judgment affirmed.

Argued October term, 1931, before TRENCHARD, DALY, and DONGES, JJ.

Heine & Laird, of Newark (John A. Laird, of Newark, of counsel), for prosecutor.

Salvatore F. La Corte, of Elizabeth, for respondent.

TRENCHARD, J.

Paul Guerise (hereinafter called workman) was employed by the Decker & Canning Company. He was injured, and on his petition he was awarded compensation by the Workmen's Compensation Bureau. His employers appealed to the common pleas court of Union county and there the judgment of the Workmen's Compensation Bureau was affirmed. The employers then sued out this writ of certiorari, bringing up the judgment of the common pleas court, and their sole contention now is that the evidence did not justify the finding that the accident arose out of and in the course of the employment.

The employers were contractors, and were building a road on the outskirts of the city of Elizabeth, and the workman here concerned was one of a group of laborers employed on the job under a foreman.

The injured workman testified that on the afternoon in question the foreman went home about 4:15 o'clock; that "as he went home he said it was raining and he said, 'fellows, the last truck has come, let them dump the truck and go home, the whole gang take the truck'"; that accordingly the whole gang got on the truck; that on the...