Rector v. Cherry Valley Timber Co.

• Decision Date: 14 March 1921
• Docket Number: 16235.
• Citation: 196 P. 653,115 Wash. 31
• Parties: RECTOR v. CHERRY VALLEY TIMBER CO.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

196 P. 653

115 Wash. 31

RECTOR v. CHERRY VALLEY TIMBER CO.

No. 16235.

Supreme Court of Washington

March 14, 1921

Department 1.

Appeal from Superior Court, Snohomish County; Ralph C. Bell, Judge.

Action by Delbert B. Rector against the Cherry Valley Timber Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Reversed, and action dismissed.

Chadwick McMicken, Ramsey & Rupp, of Seattle, and Cooley, Horan &amp Mulvehill, of Everett, for appellant.

Charles A. Turner, Noah Shakespeare, and Louis A. Merrick, all of Everett, for respondent.

MACKINTOSH J.

On the 16th day of May, 1917, respondent was a soldier in the United States Army, and was transferred from the unit in which he was serving to the Spruce Production Corps; it appearing from information obtained by the respondent's superior officers that he was an experienced logger. On December 26, 1917, he was ordered with others in the same corps to proceed to Everett, Wash., and to report at the logging camp of the appellant. This he did and was put to work under one of appellant's foremen, and on May 16 1918, he was injured, for which he seeks recovery of damages in this action. He was awarded damages by verdict of the jury, from judgment based upon which this appeal has been taken.

In furtherance of the production of material for shipbuilding and airplane construction, Congress authorized the Spruce Production Division, and to the appellant and those similarly situated, who were engaged in logging, members of this division were furnished in order to meet a deficiency in labor; this work being participated in by the government as part of its war activities. The respondent, and those working under similar conditions, were to, and did, receive the same wages that were paid to civilian employees, and were carried on the same pay roll and subject to the same superintendence. These soldiers were under the direction of the foreman while at the work of logging, though they came to the camp as a military company with a complete line of officers and were under military discipline. If the soldier did not fit into the work to which he was assigned, or did not work, these delinquencies were reported to the superior military officer who could return the man to some other military service.

It is the respondent's contention that he was not a workman employed by the appellant and is not compelled to look to the Workmen's Compensation Law for his remuneration for his injury, but that he could maintain this common-law action upon the theory that his service was involuntary and the state compensation act had no application to him. The question, then, is to determine whether the appellant's relation to the respondent was that of a workman or that of an involuntary servant.

It is abhorrent to every idea of our institutions and the methods necessary for their preservation that a member of the army should be considered as being in involuntary servitude, and this is true whether his entrance into the army was by voluntary enlistment or through the method adopted in the late war, under the selective service act. The mental attitude of a soldier does not affect the nature of his service. In whatever way he views his presence in the army it must be viewed by all others as voluntary service in the performance of the duty which he owes to the government.

'Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation, as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people, can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement.' Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U.S. 366, 38 S.Ct. 159, 62 L.Ed. 349, L. R. A. 1918C, 361, Ann. Cas. 1918B, 856.

The respondent, as a member of the army, was not impressed into involuntary servitude, and wherever he was called upon to perform service in the furtherance of the interests of his country in the attempt to prosecute the war successfully his status was the same, whether he was called upon to work in the woods of Washington or to fight in the fields of France and when he was ordered to the camp of the appellant his appearance there was voluntary. Being...