Philadelphia Ry Co v. Di Donato, 297
| Decision Date | 16 May 1921 |
| Docket Number | No. 297,297 |
| Citation | 65 L.Ed. 955,256 U.S. 327,41 S.Ct. 516 |
| Parties | PHILADELPHIA & R. RY. CO. v. DI DONATO |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. George Gowen Parry, of Philadelphia, Pa., for petitioner.
Mr. Francis H. Bohlen, of Philadelphia, Pa., for respondent.
Certiorari directed to the review of a judgment of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirming a judgment of the court of common pleas of the county of Philadelphia, which affirmed an award of the Workmen's Compensation Board of the state of Pennsylvania, allowed respondent, as widow of Pasquale Di Donato who, in the course of his employment by the railway company, was killed.Her petition was presented in the legal course to the board, and assigned for an investigation to a referee who reported an award in accordance with it.
The company prosecuted an appeal to the board which affirmed the award and dismissed the appeal.The judgment was successively affirmed, as we have said, by the court of common pleas and by the Supreme Court.
There is no connected finding of facts aside from conclusions of law.The referee found that Di Donato was employed by the company 'as a crossing watchman' at a particular public crossing, and that on March 18, 1918, at about 7:15 p. m., 'while acting in the course of his employment while flagging a train * * * was struck by a train of the company and instantly killed.'The findings then recite that the company contended that at the time of the occurrence of the injury Di Donato'was engaged in interstate commerce,' but it is added that the company 'failed to prove by the weight of the evidence that such was the fact,' and, further, that the company 'showed that many interstate shipments and trains passed over the rails of the defendant company, * * * but they did not offer any evidence whatever to show that at the time of the occurrence of the injury Pasquale Di Donato was engaged in performing some duty incident to the passage of an interstate train; and since the burden is on the defendant to show by the weight of the evidence that the injured employee was at the time of the occurrence of the injury engaged in interstate commerce, we find as a fact' that at such time Di Donato'was not engaged in work incident to interstate commerce.'It was further found that the company was 'engaged in both intrastate and interstate commerce.'
The finding by the board was that Di Donato'was killed in the course of his employment for the defendant' while he'was employed as a watchman upon a public crossing' where a public street 'crosses the tracks' of the company, and that 'an agreement was placed upon record that the defendant was engaged in both intrastate and interstate traffic.'The deduction of the board was the same as that of the referee, that the defense of interstate commerce, when set up by the defendant, became a matter of proof by competent and reliable testimony, and that the burden of proof of the same was thrown upon the defendant, and 'that the character of the employment undertaken in that respect must be determined by the work he had actually been engaged in at the very time of the accident.'
The facts and the conclusions thus expressed by the referee and the board were, in effect, repeated by the Supreme Court and made the grounds of decision.
The facts as found we may assume to exist, facts, however, disassociated from legal deductions from them.These facts are only that Di Donato was employed by the company as a flagman at a public crossing to signal both intrastate and interstate trains.In other words, his employment concerned both kinds of trains without distinction between them or character of service.He was an instrument of safety for the conduct of both.And in the course of his employment he was killed by a train whose character is not disclosed.These are the facts, all else the assertion of legal propositions.We are brought, therefore, to a consideration of the soundness and determining quality of the legal propos...
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