Rumple v. Henry H. Meyer Co.

• Decision Date: 01 December 1955
• Docket Number: No. 41,41
• Citation: 208 Md. 350,118 A.2d 486
• Parties: Bill RUMPLE v. The HENRY H. MEYER COMPANY, Inc. and Maryland Casualty Company.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 350

208 Md. 350

118 A.2d 486

Bill RUMPLE v. The HENRY H. MEYER COMPANY, Inc. and Maryland Casualty Company.

No. 41.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Dec. 1, 1955.

W. Lee Harrison, Towson, and Richard C. Murray, Baltimore (Albert J. Goodman, Annapolis, on the brief), for appellant.

Talbot W. Banks, Baltimore (Clark, Smith & Prendergast, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellees.

Before COLLINS, HENDERSON and HAMMOND, JJ., and WARNKEN and PRESCOTT, JJ., Specially Assigned.

WARNKEN, Judge (specially assigned).

This case involves a claim under the Workmen's Compensation Act, which is Article 101 of the Annotated Code of Maryland, 1951 Edition. The question is whether the accidental personal injury which the appellant (claimant) sustained, arose out of and in the course of his employment. Section 14 of Art. 101. The State Industrial Accident Commission said it did and the lower court said it did not. The latter ruling was made after the jury failed to agree and each party had filed a motion for judgment pursuant to Rule 8, III Trials, Part Three of the General Rules of Practice and Procedure. From the order entering judgment for the employer and the insurer and overruling the decision of the State Industrial Accident Commission and also overruling the claimant's motion for judgment, the latter has appealed.

At the hearing before the Commission only the claimant testified. In the trial below the claimant and a county police officer, who found the claimant after the accident in a field in an unconscious condition, were the only witnesses.

The material facts are as follows:

The Henry H. Meyer Company, Inc., employer, is engaged in the business of selling and servicing construction equipment such as cranes, shovels and loaders. Its shop is located at Arbutus, Baltimore County. Claimant was 38 and unmarried at the time of the accident, September 14, 1953, and lived at Odenton, Anne Arundel County. He had been working for the employer since April, 1950. He described his duties as service and maintenance man. He would help to unload new equipment delivered to a customer and stay with it a couple of days to service it, i. e., to see that the customer got the right performance out of the machine and that it was given the proper lubrication and adjustment. Where it was possible claimant made repairs and adjustments in the field or at the customer's location. When not so engaged he worked in the employer's shop at Arbutus. The out-of-shop jobs caused claimant to travel to Washington and various points in the states of Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania. Such trips were made by automobile in which claimant kept his tools that were worth about $1,500.

Claimant was on call 24 hours a day. He worked any time that a customer called and there was work to be done, including nights and Sundays, and he received telephone calls at his home. In the beginning of his employment he used his own pickup truck for transportation to jobs away from the shop. The employer paid claimant a mileage allowance for such trips which just about covered the upkeep of the truck but not running repairs or new tires. He also used his truck between the shop and his home.

Claimant's boss, who was shop superintendent, decided to discontinue the mileage arrangement and proposed that the employer would provide claimant with a truck and pay all expenses including gasoline, oil, tires and everything, and that claimant could drive it to and from work and drive it just the same as if it were his own truck. The proposal was accepted by claimant and pursuant thereto several trucks had been furnished by the employer, the last, a 1953 Ford, about two or three months before the accident, which was driven less than 1,000 miles. Claimant said one of the purposes of being given the truck was to use it to go back and forth to work between his home and the shop. Claimant travelled to the job sites either directly from his home or from the shop and the customer was charged according to which was closer. On such trips directly from home his time began when he left home and ended when he returned home. Otherwise his time began when he reached the shop and ended when he left the shop. On the Saturday before the accident claimant was instructed to make a service trip on Monday to Frederick, where he was no arrive at 8:00 A.M. This would necessitate his leaving home between 6:00 and 6:30 A.M.

On Sunday claimant worked in the shop until noon. He punched his time card at that time and his pay ceased and would not have been resumed until he left his home the following morning to go to Frederick. Upon leaving the shop claimant, with two others who had worked in the shop that morning, went in the 1953 Ford truck, which had been provided for him by the employer, to Tom's Tavern at 1107 S. Paca Street, Baltimore, arriving there about 12:30 P.M. Each of them had two beers. The companions separately left to go home, the last about 2:30 or 3:00 P.M. Shortly thereafter claimant drove out to Rudy's, on the Old Annapolis Road, and got his dinner, being there from about 3:00 to 4:30 P.M. He then stopped at the yard of one of his employer's customers to see a timekeeper or superintendent of the customer and got back to Tom's Tavern around 8:00 or 9:00 P.M. Claimant sat around there and talked, drinking only soft drinks, until it closed, after midnight, and then started to drive home. After travelling about ten miles on the route which he daily used between the shop and his home, the right front tire 'busted', causing the truck to strike and shear in half a telephone pole on the right side of the road. Claimant was severely injured. A police officer, who was called to the scene of the accident about 1:45 A.M. on Monday, and found claimant unconscious, said he noticed the smell of alcohol on his breath, but could not definitely say he was under the influence. Claimant said he was not intoxicated, and had only had the two beers, previously mentioned, in the afternoon at the tavern, which does not sell hard liquor. Tom's Tavern is not in the direction of claimant's home. He said one of his fellow workers, who went to the tavern with him that Sunday, lives very near the tavern and it was practically a daily routine for them to go to the tavern and talk over jobs.

The motion of each party for judgment was necessarily based on the premise that the facts are undisputed and the question involved is one of law. If the facts are undisputed and there is no dispute as to any material inferences to be drawn from the facts, the question involved becomes one of law and should be decided by the court. Harrison v. Central Const. Co., 135 Md. 170, 180, 108 A. 874; Atlantic Refining Co. v. Forrester, 180 Md. 517, 523, 25 A.2d 667; Dunstan v. Bethlehem Steel Co., 187 Md. 571, 577, 51 A.2d 288; Greenwalt v. Brauns Building Specialties Corp., 203 Md. 313, 318-319, 100 A.2d 804. As we find there is no dispute with respect to the material facts or the inferences to be drawn therefrom, we will proceed to decide the legal question involved.

The courts have qualified or adopted exceptions to the general rule that injuries sustained by employees while going to or returning from their regular place of work do not arise out of and in the course of their employment, as the hazards they encounter on such trips are ordinarily not incidents to the employer's business. One of the exceptions that is now uniformly recognized and applied is that where the employer furnishes the employee free transportation to and from his work as an incident to the employment, an injury sustained by the employee during such transportation arises out of and in the course of his employment. And the employee is deemed to be on duty during transportation. Watson v. Grimm, 200 Md. 461, 467-469, 90 A.2d 180. The fact that the employee is not being paid wages at the time of the accident is immaterial. Cardillo v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 330 U.S. 469, 482, 67 S.Ct. 801, 91 L.Ed. 1028. In Heaps v. Cobb, 185 Md. 372, 383, 45 A.2d 73, an employee of the City was killed while riding to the office in his own car in the morning to keep an appointment (which is the same as reporting for work). It was the custom of the City to furnish an automobile to take the employee to the office and to his home. It was held that deceased was 'in the actual performance of duty' when he met his death. The quoted provision of the Employee's Retirement System was treated as legally the same as the provision of the Workmen's Compensation Act involved in the case at bar. Where an automobile is furnished by the employer as the means of transportation, and the employee sustains an injury while driving it, either during or after a deviation from the usual or most direct route home, the legal result as to whether the accident arose out of and in the course of his employment will usually depend upon the particular circumstances. Thus a prior adjudication is frequently not too persuasive or helpful as the decision in each case is dependent upon its own facts. The employer's principal contention is: 'Obviously, even though the appellant's use of the truck was with his employer's consent, the exercise of that license for personal purposes did not place the appellant within the scope of his employment. No obligation or duty of his work required the appellant to be on the highway in the middle of the night when this accident occurred.' As the accident happened at the precise spot and in the same way as it could have happened if the claimant had driven directly home upon leaving the shop, the effect of the employer's contention must be that the delay caused by the temporary deviation for personal purposes broke the connecting link between claimant and his employment, not only during the period of deviation, but thereafter and while he was travelling towards his home on the route which he always used. There is no exact method...