Owens v. Bennett Air Serv.
| Decision Date | 18 January 1946 |
| Docket Number | No. 257.,257. |
| Citation | 133 N.J.L. 540,45 A.2d 320 |
| Parties | OWENS v. BENNETT AIR SERVICE et al. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by George L. Owens, claimant, by his next friend, George Owens, opposed by the Bennett Air Service, employer, and another. A judgment of the Workmen's Compensation Bureau awarding compensation was reversed by the Court of Common Pleas, and claimant brings certiorari.
Court's judgment reversed, and bureau's judgment modified and affirmed as modified.
October term, 1945, before CASE, BODINE, and PERSKIE, JJ.
Dixon, Levine & Levine, of Trenton (George E. Meredith, of Trenton, of counsel), for prosecutor.
Crawford Jamieson, of Trenton, for respondents.
This is a workman's compensation case. It presents the usual question of whether the accident arose out of and in the course of the employment. We think it did.
The prosecutor, a minor, was employed by respondent as a mechanic's helper and student pilot. On February 1, 1941, while employed at the Princeton Airport of the respondent, the employee accepted an invitation of the owner of an aeroplane that had landed at the airport, and had been serviced by the employee and a fellow worker, to take a flight. The employee accepted the invitation and the aeroplane crashed after it had risen some 150 feet thereby causing servere injuries both to the employee and to the pilot of the aeroplane.
The Workmen's Compensation Bureau was of the opinion that the employee in accepting an invitation for a ride with a customer did a thing which was not contrary to the rules of the employer but which was in fact countenanced by the officials of the employer and that therefore the accident arose out of and in the course of the employment. On appeal, the Mercer County Court of Common Pleas reached the conclusion, without more, that at the time of the accident the employee was not performing any act that could reasonably be considered to be part of the duties of his employment or for the benefit of the employer, and reversed the Bureau. We granted certiorari to review the judgment of the Pleas.
On certiorari to review a workman's compensation judgment, it is the duty of the Supreme Court to determine the law and the facts independently of the finding thereon by the lower courts. Beerman v. Public Service Co-ordinated Transport, 123 N.J.L. 479, 9 A.2d 690. Following is our independent finding of the facts:
Sometime in the month of August 1940, the employee, accompanied by his father, traveled to the airfield of the employer near Highstown, N. J., to seek employment as an aeroplane mechanic and also to be taught how to fly an aeroplane. The two had a conversation with the manager of the airfield and also the chief mechanic. They were told by the officials of the employer of the opportunities offered by the employer to its employees and in the course of the conversation between the employee and the officials of the employer several employees were pointed out who had progressed from student-mechanics to mechanics and flying instructors and especially one such employee who was then earning $50 a week.
The terms of the employment were discussed and closed. By these terms the employee was placed on probation for the first week and was to receive no pay for his work that week. The second week he was to receive $7.50 and thereafter he was to receive $7.50 a week plus forty-five minutes of free flying instructions each week if his services were satisfactory. At the time of the accident he was receiving $10 a week plus the forty-five minutes of free flying instructions.
The employee's duties were of a very general nature and included wheeling out aeroplanes, assisting in their repair, servicing ‘planes' with gasoline and oil, transporting flyers to the factory at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, to fly ‘planes' back...
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