Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp. v. Dependents of Harris

• Decision Date: 13 June 1966
• Docket Number: No. 44019,44019
• Citation: 187 So.2d 886
• Parties: INGALLS SHIPBUILDING CORPORATION and American Mutual Liability Insurance Company v. DEPENDENTS OF Audley B. HARRIS, Deceased.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 886

187 So.2d 886

INGALLS SHIPBUILDING CORPORATION and American Mutual

Liability Insurance Company v. DEPENDENTS OF Audley B. HARRIS, Deceased.

No. 44019.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

June 13, 1966.

White & White, Gulfport, for appellants.

Lester C. Franklin, Jr., Pascagoula, for appellees.

ROBERTSON, Justice:

The widow, Mrs. Lona Boone Harris, and minor son, Audley Bedford Harris, Jr., of decedent, Audley Bedford Harris, filed a claim on August 29, 1964, against Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation and American Mutual Liability Insurance Company seeking compensation for death benefits under the Mississippi Workmen's Compensation Act.

The decedent died on March 23, 1963, of an 'acute myocardial infarct,' according to the certificate of death. The claim was predicated on alleged heart attacks suffered in 1958 and in 1960 by the decedent while he was in the employ of Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation. The decedent left the employment of Ingalls on December 8, 1960, and from that time up until the date of his death worked in his own pest control business. He filed no notice of injury and made no claim for compensation against his employer.

The Attorney-Referee sustained a plea of the two year statute of limitations holding that inasmuch as no notice was given and no claim filed by the decedent himself within two years from December 8, 1960, that the claim of the depedents of the deceased was also barred. The full Commission reversed the order of the Attorney-Referee holding that the statute of limitations did not begin death of the husband and father, and inasmuch deathg of the husband and father, and inasmuch as their claim was filed within two years of the date of his death, it was not barred. The Circuit Court of Jackson County affirmed the order of the full Commission, and the appellants perfected an appeal to this Court. Mississippi Code of 1942 Recompiled (1952), Section 6998-18 provides in part as follows:

'Regardless of whether notice was received, if no payment of compesation (other than medical treatment or burial expense) is made, and no application for benefits filed with the commission within two years from the date of the injury or death, the right to compensation therefor shall be barred.' (Emphasis added.)

Whether the two year statute of limitations begins to run from the date of the injury or from the date of death as to the claim of the dependents is the sole question involved in this case.

It is a matter of first impression in Mississippi. The authorities from other jurisdictions are in sharp conflict on this question.

The appellants argue that this is unquestionably a derivative cause of action because the widow and minor son had no dealings with Ingalls, and their claim, if any, arose only by virtue of the fact that their husband and father respectively worked for Ingalls and was allegedly injured during the course of his employment. The appellants contend that inasmuch as the statute of limitations had run against the employee himself and no claim could be filed by him, the undoubtedly, no claim could be filed by his dependents who derived their rights from and through him.

The problem was pointed up in 2 Larson, Workmen's Compensation Law Section 78.62 (1952) in these words:

'Death claims present one special question, however, which is the problem of the extent to which death claims should be barred by omission of the original notice of injury or by failure of the employee himself to make a claim within the original claims period.

'Although the question has had comparatively little attention, the employee's failure to make claim has usually been...