Miles v. Montreal Baseball Club

• Decision Date: 18 February 1980
• Docket Number: No. QQ-213,QQ-213
• Citation: 379 So.2d 1325
• Parties: Arthur Davis MILES, Appellant, v. MONTREAL BASEBALL CLUB and Commercial Union Assurance Companies, Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 1325

379 So.2d 1325

Arthur Davis MILES, Appellant, v. MONTREAL BASEBALL CLUB and Commercial Union Assurance Companies, Appellees.

No. QQ-213.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

Feb. 18, 1980.

Janet W. Freeman of Cone, Owen, Wagner, Nugent, Johnson, Hazouri & Roth, P. A., West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Harry D. Robinson, West Palm Beach, for appellees.

PER CURIAM.

Appellant, a professional baseball player in the Montreal Expos' organization, was assigned in 1977 to the Expos' West Palm Beach farm club. He had signed a standard player contract requiring him, among other things, to cooperate with and participate in the club's promotional activities. In August 1977, team members were told a party would be held and the sports media would attend for interviews and pictures. There is competent, substantial evidence to support the judge of industrial claims' finding that Manager Felipe Alou's announcement of the press party constituted a directive that the players be there. Appellant went to the party but was not interviewed. He and several other players spent part of the time diving into the Intercoastal Waterway; during one such dive, he hit bottom and suffered paralysis as well as other injuries. The judge of industrial claims found that appellant was injured in an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment but denied benefits because § 440.02(1)(c)3, Florida Statutes (1977), excludes professional athletes from workers' compensation coverage.

We need not consider appellant's argument that the statutory exclusion of professional athletes violates equal protection, because there is another ground for reversal of the judge of industrial claims' order. We find coverage in this case by analogizing its facts to those of a line of Florida cases dealing with the exemption, contained in § 440.02(1)(c)2, Florida Statutes (1977), of agricultural laborers.

In Miranda v. Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance Company, 229 So.2d 232, 235 (Fla.1970), the Supreme Court held that a field foreman, responsible for transporting and supervising farm workers, was covered by Chapter 440:

'. . . (i)t is the character of labor performed by the employee that must determine its (the agricultural labor exemption) application rather than the character of employer's business.'

Claimant in another case had been hired to repair and erect new buildings and tenant houses on a farm. His employer sought to evoke the agricultural exemption, but the court rejected that proposition:

. . . it never was the intent of the agricultural labor exclusion under the Florida Workmen's Compensation Law to exempt farmers as a class or agriculture as an industry, but merely to exempt the kind of work or labor particularly associated with ordinary farming operations performed On a farm, such as plowing, harrowing, planting, fertilizing, cultivating, harvesting, preparation of farm products for market (e. g., washing and packing, (sic)), feeding livestock, milking cows, bottling milk, repairing fences, and the like.

Thomas Smith Farms, Inc. v. Alday, 182 So.2d 405, 411 (Fla.1966). (Emphasis in the original.)

Appellant was a professional baseball player and, had he been injured while playing baseball, he could not have received Chapter 440 benefits. The press party he was required to attend was not, however, "the kind of work or labor particularly associated with" playing professional baseball, but was an additional activity imposed upon him by the employer and to the employer's substantial benefit. See City of Daytona Beach v. Mathias, IRC Order 2-2983 (June 16, 1976), cert. denied, 350 So.2d 458 (Fla.1977).

Because of our disposition of this case, we need not address appellant's last point, that the employer waived...