In re Cowden

• Decision Date: 16 October 1916
• Parties: In re COWDEN.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

225 Mass. 66

113 N.E. 1036

In re COWDEN.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

Oct. 16, 1916.

Appeal from Superior Court, Worcester County.

Proceedings by Edith M. Cowden for Workmen's Compensation for death of Herbert E. Cowden, deceased, opposed by the Claflin-Sumner Coal Company, employer, and the Employers' Liability Assurance Corporation, Ltd., insurer. From a decree affirming denial of award by the Industrial Accident Board, petitioner appeals. Modified and affirmed.Marvin M. Taylor and Marvin C. Taylor, both of Worcester, for appellant.

Chas. C. Milton and Frank L. Riley, both of Worcester, for appellee, insurer.

RUGG, C. J.

The pertinent facts are that the deceased employé, Herbert E. Cowden, was the natural son of a woman who subsequently married a man named Cowden. The claimant, Edith M. Cowden, was a daughter of this marriage. Herbert was adopted by Mr. Cowden according to law, his wife, the mother of Herbert, joining in the petition. The mother predeceased the employé, but the adopting father still is living.

The question to be decided is whether the claimant, Edith M. Cowden, was a dependent of Herbert E. Cowden, the deceased employé, at the time of the latter's injury, within the meaning of the Workmen's Compensation Act. The act in part 5, § 2, St. 1911, c. 751, as amended by St. 1913, c. 568, § 1, defines dependents as ‘members of the employé's family or next of kin who were wholly or partially dependent upon the earnings of the employé for support at the time of the injury.’ Two general classes thus are created, who may be dependents; first, members of the employé's family; second, his next of kin.

1. The Industrial Accident Board has found that the claimant was not a member of the employé's family. That finding must stand, for it is amply supported by evidence. The employé was not the head of a family. He maintained no household. He simply was a boarder in the family of another. He paid the board of the claimant for about three months before his death, in the same family. He was under no obligation to support her. That duty rested upon her father, who, as the board found, maintained a suitable home and repeatedly asked her to come to it. These circumstances show that she was not a member of the family of the employé. Family in its usual sense means ‘the collective body of persons who live in one house, and under one head or management.’ Dodge v. Boston & Providence R. R., 154 Mass. 299, 301, 28 N. E. 243, 244 (13 L. R. A. 318). That is the significance ordinarily attributed to the word under the act. Kelley's Case, 222 Mass. 538, 111 N. E. 395. See Newman's Case, 222 Mass. 563, 568, 111 N. E. 359, L. R. A. 1916C, 1145.

2. The claimant, being the natural half sister and the sister by adoption of the deceased employé, manifestly was not his next of kin, because his adopting father, being the only living parent, stands in the relation of next of...