Louis A. Gily & Sons v. Shankle's Dependents
| Decision Date | 04 February 1963 |
| Docket Number | No. 42553,42553 |
| Citation | 246 Miss. 384,149 So.2d 480 |
| Parties | LOUIS A. GILY & SONS et al. v. DEPENDENTS OF Kenneth SHANKLE, Deceased. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Cox, Dunn & Clark, Jackson, for appellants.
J. A. Travis, Jr., Jackson, Charles C. Finch, Batesville, for appellee.
In this workmen's compensation case, the question is whether the Workmen's Compensation Commission was warranted in finding that the deceased worker was an employee, rather than a servant of an independent contractor.
Louis A. Gily & Sons, Inc. (called Gily) entered into a contract with the State Building Commission to do general contract work on a women's dormitory at the University of Mississippi. Gily agreed to furnish all the materials according to plans and specifications, and to make a dirt fill, in order to erect the building.
Several days before the fatal accident, Gily entered into a verbal contract with O'Neal, who was to furnish a dragline and to load 25,000 yards of dirt for Gily on trucks owned and provided by Gily. Gily was to furnish the land and the dirt to be dug by the dragline and loaded on the trucks. O'Neal was to provide a dragline operator to load Gily's trucks with the dirt, at 15cents per cubic yard. Gily would pay O'Neal 'upon the monthly estimates of and out of the monthly payments from the Mississippi State Building Commission.'
O'Neal hired Kenneth Shankle, the deceased employee, to operate the dragline. The land from which the dirt was to be removed was approximately one and one-half miles west of Oxford and the University. Several weeks after Shankle's death this oral contract was reduced to writing. O'Neal agreed with Gily that he would pay a certain wage scale and make reports to Gily of the hours his men worked. Eugene Gily, an officer of the company, went with O'Neal to the location, showed him where to dig, told him he wanted to start right away, and instructed him to cut the lot down to a level. Gily had the power to move O'Neal's dragline operations from one spot to another, and exercised that power on several occasions to obtain dirt with more clay in it. Gily reserved the authority to instruct O'Neal when he could and could not work, and how many hours a day to do so.
O'Neal made arrangements with Carter to move his dragline to the job site. He hired Shankle to operate it, and, on the day in question, McKenzie, an employee of Carter, Shankle, and another employee of O'Neal, Robinson, loaded the dragline on Carter's truck, which transported it to the location. Gily previously had cleared the land where the dirt was to be dug and loaded. After the dragline was removed from the truck, and on the location of the job, Robinson was driving it late that afternoon, when it was almost dark. Shankle started to place a pipe into the metal tracks to keep them from slipping, when he was electrocuted, either by the boom of the dragline coming in contact with an overhead electric line, or the electricity arcing from the line to the boom and into Shankle.
It is undisputed that Shankle's death arose...
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Boyd v. Crosby Lumber & Mfg. Co.
...test of the employer-employee relation is the right of the employer to control the details of the work. Gily & Sons, Inc. v. Dependents of Shankle, Deceased, 246 Miss. 384, 149 So.2d 480. 'The traditional test of the employer-employee relation is the right of the employer to control the det......
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Jones v. James Reeves Contractors, Inc.
...Runnels, 234 Miss. at 277, 106 So.2d at 51, quoting Westover v. Hoover, 88 Neb. 201, 129 N.W. 285. In Louis A. Gily & Sons v. Shankle's Dependents, 246 Miss. 384, 149 So.2d 480 (1963), another dragline case, the Court, again looking at who had the right of control, held that O'Neal was not ......
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Biggart v. Texas Eastern Transmission Corp.
...at the time of his death. Brown v. E. L. Bruce Co., Inc., et al, 253 Miss. 1, 175 So.2d 151 (1965); Louis L. Gily & Sons v. Dependents of Shankle, 246 Miss. 384, 149 So.2d 480 (1963); Wade v. Traxler Gravel Co., 232 Miss. 592, 100 So.2d 103 (1958); Mozingo v. Mississippi Employment Security......
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Ray v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., Inc.
...at the time of his death. Brown v. E. L. Bruce Co., Inc., et al., 253 Miss. 1, 175 So.2d 151 (1965); Louis L. Gily & Sons v. Dependents of Shankle, 246 Miss. 384, 149 So.2d 480 (1963); Wade v. Traxler Gravel Co., 232 Miss. 592, 100 So.2d 103 (1958); Mozingo v. Mississippi Employment Securit......