Severson v. Hanford Tri-State Airlines

• Decision Date: 18 October 1939
• Docket Number: No. 11406.,11406.
• Citation: 105 F.2d 622
• Parties: SEVERSON v. HANFORD TRI-STATE AIRLINES, Inc., et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

105 F.2d 622 (1939)

SEVERSON v. HANFORD TRI-STATE AIRLINES, Inc., et al.

No. 11406.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

July 19, 1939.

Rehearing Denied October 18, 1939.

S. W. Jensch, of St. Paul, Minn. (A. B. Christofferson, of St. Paul, Minn., on the brief), for appellant.

Pierce Butler, Jr., of St. Paul, Minn. (Richard J. Leonard and Doherty, Rumble, Butler, Sullivan & Mitchell, all of St. Paul, Minn., on the brief), for appellees.

Before GARDNER, SANBORN, and WOODROUGH, Circuit Judges.

GARDNER, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment dismissing plaintiff's cause of action entered upon a verdict directed in favor of defendants on trial of the action. The action was brought by appellant as plaintiff, to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by him in the course of his employment through the negligence of his employer. The verdict was directed upon the ground that plaintiff could not maintain a common law action for damages, but that his remedy must be sought under the applicable Workmen's Compensation Law, Mason's Minn.St.1927, § 4261 et seq. The lower court expressed the opinion that the Minnesota Workmen's Compensation Act was applicable.

The complaint alleged that plaintiff was employed by the defendant Hanford Tri-State Airlines, to fly as a co-pilot on airplanes carrying United States mail between St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Chicago, Illinois; that while in the course of his employment, on September 2, 1934, he was injured by a crash near Cochran, Wisconsin, due to defective equipment and acts of negligence on behalf of the defendant Hanford Tri-State Airlines. It was alleged that the plaintiff was employed under an oral contract in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1934.

It appears from the testimony that the defendant Hanford Tri-State Airlines had an airplane business in Iowa and was awarded an air mail contract from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Chicago, Illinois. Plaintiff was first employed as a traffic representative at Minneapolis, at which place his duties were defined and his salary agreement consummated. He had a desk and a ticket office in Minneapolis, and his work was confined to Minnesota, except one or two meetings of traffic men in Sioux City. He remained on the payroll of the defendant Tri-State Airlines from the time of that employment. In April, 1934, he made a survey trip of a proposed airline route, after which he was sworn in as an air mail carrier in Minneapolis, and began to work as a co-pilot. St. Paul was the division point, and the planes ridden by him plied between St. Paul and Chicago. Maintenance work was done on the machines at St. Paul, and a dispatcher had an office at that place. The plaintiff resided in Minneapolis, and the defendant Hanford Tri-State Airlines employed in Minnesota some mechanics besides the dispatcher and an alternate dispatcher and the pilots and co-pilots who manned the planes. Plaintiff was definitely assigned to the work as a co-pilot on the planes flying between St. Paul and Chicago, and in the course of his duties went to the St. Paul field every night and there boarded a plane that was waiting for him. Every run he went out on was from St. Paul. In the course of his duties he reported to the first pilot who determined whether the flight should be made. During the course of his employment as co-pilot, and up to the time of the accident, he received no information nor instructions about his duties from any person other than his first pilot of the particular ship he was on. He was given a form of report to fill out, which when filled out he turned in at St. Paul, when he came back at the end of his run. The pay checks, including plaintiff's, were distributed at the St. Paul hangar. The pilots and co-pilots lived either in St. Paul or Minneapolis. Plaintiff made a trip from St. Paul every other night, with a layover in Chicago before returning of between two and three hours, while his layover in St. Paul was thirty-six hours. There was maintained at St. Paul a list of the assignments of the first pilots. After he began flying between St. Paul and Chicago, he at no time went to Sioux City for any purpose connected with his employment. Most of the pilots' instructions came from the dispatcher or chief pilot at St. Paul, and in the ordinary course of business, instructions respecting duties of defendant's pilots and co-pilots came from a superior employee in St. Paul. After the Chicago run was started, a Mr. Peterson was employed by the defendant Hanford Tri-State Airlines to administer the detail work of the various runs and his headquarters were in St. Paul. The pilots' schedules were made up monthly on a large schedule sheet and kept in the office at St. Paul, where the pilots came to inspect them.

The accident occurred in the State of Wisconsin, and the airplane route between St. Paul and Chicago passed over that state. It was stipulated that "negotiations for employment and the contract of employment were made and entered into in the State of Iowa." The stipulation seems not to have been accepted or relied upon at the trial, as much testimony was produced on the question of how and where plaintiff was employed.

The action was originally brought in the state court but was removed to the federal court on the ground of diversity of citizenship.

It was apparently the theory of the plaintiff that he had been employed in the State of Iowa, where his employer had failed to comply with the provisions of the Workmen's Compensation Act; that by reason of such failure he was at liberty to disregard the provisions of that Act and to maintain an action for common law negligence for the injury received by him in the State of Wisconsin, and that although the action was brought in the State of Minnesota, it was not...