Sanders v. Fork Ridge Coal & Coke Co.

• Decision Date: 21 November 1927
• Citation: 299 S.W. 795
• Parties: SANDERS et al. v. FORK RIDGE COAL & COKE CO.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 795

299 S.W. 795

SANDERS et al. v. FORK RIDGE COAL & COKE CO.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

November 21, 1927.

Appeal from Chancery Court, Claiborne County; J. H. Wallace, Judge.

Action by Clemen Sanders and others against the Fork Ridge Coal & Coke Company. From the decree, the complainants appeal. Affirmed.

J. R. Ketron and Wm. I. Davis, both of Tazewell, for Clemen Sanders.

Montgomery, Donaldson & Montgomery, of Tazewell, for Oma B. Sanders.

GREEN, C. J.

Mat Sanders, an employee of the defendant, was killed while in the course of his employment. The defendant paid into court the amount due to the dependents of the deceased under the Workmen's Compensation Act (Pub. Acts 1919, c. 123), and the controversy is as to the distribution of this fund. More particularly stated, the exact question presented is whether an illegitimate posthumous child of the deceased is entitled to share in the fund.

The deceased had been married three times and left three legitimate children. Some months before his death he went from Grundy county to Claiborne county and procured employment with the defendant. He left his lawful wife in Grundy county as well as his children, and seems to have passed as an unmarried man in Claiborne county. It was the understanding that the lawful wife of the deceased would later join him and he contributed to her support and to the support of his children up to the time of his death. There was no legal separation between him and his lawful wife, and she had no knowledge of anything irregular in his conduct after he left her.

While in Claiborne county, the deceased took up with another woman. She thought he was unmarried, and a marriage ceremony was performed between them and they lived together. He supported this woman also up to the time of his death. Within five months after the death of Sanders, the woman with whom he had last lived gave birth to a child of which he was the father.

The chancellor decreed that the lawful wife and the legitimate children of the deceased were entitled to all the fund paid into court under the workmen's compensation statute by the defendant. No claim for a share in this fund appears to have been made in behalf of the woman with whom deceased was living when killed. The only claim is that the illegitimate child is entitled to a share.

In Portin v. Portin, 149 Tenn. 530, 261 S. W. 362, this court held that his illegitimate child supported by a deceased employee was a dependent entitled to compensation under our statute. This decision was rested solely upon subsection 3 of section 30 of chapter 123 of the Public Acts of 1919. The court undertook to show that the statute, by subsection 3, provides for a class of children in addition to the legitimate offspring of the employee, i. e., children supported by the employee at the time of his death, either wholly or in part. It was said that to obtain the benefits of subsection 3, and to come within the class provided for in subsection 3, "parties must have been supported in fact by the deceased."

We recognized in Portin v. Portin, supra, that as a general rule the word "child" or "children" in the law is taken to mean legitimate child or children only, but concluded that, by reason of the particular provisions of our Workmen's Compensation Act, it was intended to provide for illegitimate children of an employee whose care he had assumed and whom he had undertaken to support.

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