Schultz v. Chevrolet Motor Co.

• Decision Date: 04 January 1932
• Docket Number: No. 230.,230.
• Citation: 239 N.W. 894,256 Mich. 393
• Parties: SCHULTZ v. CHEVROLET MOTOR CO.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

256 Mich. 393

239 N.W. 894

SCHULTZ

v.CHEVROLET MOTOR CO.

No. 230.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Jan. 4, 1932.

Appeal from Department of Labor and Industry.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Joseph Schultz, claimant, opposed by the Chevrolet Motor Company, employer. The Board of the Department of Labor and Industry granted an award, and the employer appeals.

Affirmed.

Argued before the Entire Bench.

J. G. Stevenson, of Detroit, for appellant.

Louis C. Miriani, of Detroit, for appellee.

WIEST, J.

Plaintiff and another employee of defendant company were engaged in unloading ‘pedal bundles' from a truck. Plaintiff tossed a bundle, and it struck his fellow employee. The fellow employee was angered thereby, seized a stake, and struck plaintiff, fracturing his skull. Defendant reported the accident, but disclaimed that it arose out of the employment. This is an appeal by defendant from an award of compensation to plaintiff, and presents the question of whether the accident arose out of the employment. It is conceded that the accident arose in the course of the employment.

Defendant cites Marshall v. Baker-Vawter Co., 206 Mich. 466, 173 N. W. 191, 192, and plaintiff cites Little v. Atlas Drop Forge Co., 221 Mich. 604, 192 N. W. 619. These cases are in harmony and recognize and quote the general rule stated in Jacquemin v. Manufacturing Co., 92 Conn. 382, 103 A. 115, 116, L. R. A. 1918E, 496. We again state that rule: ‘If one employee assaults another employee solely to gratify his feeling of anger or hatred, the injury results from the voluntary act of the assailant, and cannot be said to arise either directly out of the employment or as an incident of it. But when the employee is assaulted while he is defending his employer, or his employer's property, or his employer's interests, or when the assault was incidental to some duty of his employment, the injuries he suffers in consequence of the assault will, as a rule, arise out of the employment. He will then be serving his employer's ends and not his own.’

In the Marshall Case, the court was bound by the following conclusion of the board: “It would seem that there might have been some reason for the shooting, but we are absolutely unable to discover what it was.”

The Little Case is in point with the case at bar. Practically all authority holds that an assault by one employee upon another for personal reasons, not growing out of the relation as fellow employees, or out of acts in the performance of their work, cannot be held to arise out of the employment.

In the instant case, there was causal relation between the employment and the assault. It was an act in the course of the work...