Lower Vein Coal Co v. Industrial Board of Indiana
| Decision Date | 28 February 1921 |
| Docket Number | No. 186,186 |
| Citation | 41 S.Ct. 252,255 U.S. 144,65 L.Ed. 555 |
| Parties | LOWER VEIN COAL CO. v. INDUSTRIAL BOARD OF INDIANA et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. William H. Thompson, of Indianapolis, Ind., and Henry W. Moore, of Terre Haute, Ind., for appellant.
Messrs. E. M. White, of Indianapolis, Ind., and John A. Riddle, of Vincennes, Ind., for appellees.
Appellant, the Lower Vein Coal Company, is a corporation of the state of Indiana. The Industrial Board of Indiana is a board created by an act of the General Assembly of Indiana, approved March 8, 1915, known as 'the Indiana Workmen's Compensation Act.' Laws 1915, c. 106. The personal appellees are members of the board.
This suit was brought by the Coal Company to enjoin the Industrial Board, the Governor and Attorney General of the state, from enforcing in any manner section 18 of the Workmen's Compensation Act of the state, as amended by the General Assembly in 1919 (Laws 1919, c. 57), from asserting that plaintiff is compelled to operate under the Compensation Act, from hearing any claim for compensation asserted by any employe of the plaintiff so long as plaintiff elects not to come within the provisions of the act from making any award to any injured employe, or his or her dependents, during such time, and from doing any other act or thing prejudicial to the rights of the plaintiff, so long as it elects not to be bound by the act.
The grounds for this relief were set forth in a complaint of considerable length to which the defendants separately and severally answered. After trial of the issues thus presented the District Court entered its decree dismissing the bill for want of equity. This appeal was then prosecuted.
The Compensation Act is very long and declares its purposes to be to promote the prevention of industrial accidents; to cause provision to be made for adequate medical and surgical care for injured employes in the course of their employment; to provide methods of insuring the payment of such compensation; to create an Industrial Board for the administration of the act and to prescribe the powers and duties of such board; to abolish the state Bureau of Inspection, and provide for the transfer to the Industrial Board certain rights, powers and duties of the Bureau of Inspection.
The original act passed in 1915 was elective and left employer and employe the option of rejecting its terms with certain exceptions. It was amended in 1917 (Laws 1917, c. 165), and railroad employes engaged in train service were exempted from its provisions.
The amendment of 1919 made the act mandatory as to all coal-mining companies of the state and its political divisions and as to municipal corporations. To all other employers the act remains permissive. They may elect to operate under its provisions. Railroad employes engaged in train service are not within them.
The sole question presented is the validity of section 18 as amended; that is, the compulsion of coal companies to the operation of the act, while to other employers it is permissive, or does not apply at all. The grounds of attack upon it are that it violates the due process clause and the equal protection of the laws clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and sections 21 and 23 of the Indiana Bill of Rights. Specifically, the question is, as the Coal Company expresses it:
'Whether the Indiana General Assembly may pass a general compensation law, applicable to all employers within the state, and make it compulsory as to one hazardous employment, and elective as to all others (many equally as hazardous) except railroad employes in train service to which it does not apply at all.'
And the insistence is 'that such a classification rests upon no sound or just basis,' and hence is inimical to the Constitution of the United States and that of Indiana.
The principle of law involved and the power of a state to distinguish and classify objects in its legislation have been too often declared, too abundantly and variously illustrated, to need repetition and we pass immediately to the contention of counsel. It is that the act is addressed to hazardous employments and where in employments that character exists, sameness exists, and a law which ignores such sameness discriminates in its operation and offends the Constitution of the United States. It may be that the Coal Company does not contend for so broad a principle but may assert protection by a comparison of its business with other businesses equally hazardous, or even more hazardous than coal mining, and that necessarily the exemption of the businesses so compared from the law taints it with illegal discrimination. To support and justify the comparison, statistics of accidents are given in the complaint, and in the number of accidental injuries coal mines are made to run fifth. Notwithstanding those other companies may go in or out of the law—coal-mining companies must stay.
The answer replies with counter assertions and statistics and a detail of the methods of coal mining and what their methods cause of accidents to the miners, and to these are added it is said, the risks that come from the generation of noxious and explosive gases. And there is evidence in the case addressed to the conflicting statistics and the conclusions to be deduced from them which occupies about ninety-three pages of the record. In this evidence occupations and businesses are compared with estimates of accidents in each and their character, severity and consequences, fatal and otherwise. There is also testimony of the wages that mine workers get and of their prosperity, and that they have a legal department and paid attorneys. And there is averment and testimony of two organizations of mine owners who retain officers and attorneys to defend suits and secure releases from personal injury claims.
The length and character of the reports and tables of statistics preclude summary. It may be conceded that different deductions may be made from them, but they and the controversies over them and what they justified or demanded of remedy were matters for the...
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