Shanahan v. Monarch Eng'g Co.

• Citation: 219 N.Y. 469,114 N.E. 795
• Parties: SHANAHAN v. MONARCH ENGINEERING CO.
• Decision Date: 28 December 1916
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

219 N.Y. 469

114 N.E. 795

SHANAHAN

v.MONARCH ENGINEERING CO.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Dec. 28, 1916.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department.

Action by Margaret Shanahan, as administratrix, etc., of Michael Shanahan, deceased, against the Monarch Engineering Company. From an order of the Appellate Division (172 App. Div. 221,159 N. Y. Supp. 257), affirming an interlocutory judgment made by the Supreme Court sustaining a demurrer to an answer interposed by defendant, defendant appeals. Order reversed, and questions certified answered in the negative.

Willard Bartlett, C. J., and Chase, J., dissenting.

George P. Keating, of Buffalo, for appellant.

W. J. Wetherbee, of Buffalo, for respondent.

POUND, J.

A demurrer to one of the defenses in this action as insufficient has been sustained. The pleadings upon which this decision has been based disclose the following facts: This action is brought under the provisions of sections 1902-1908 of the Code of Civil Procedure to recover damages for the benefit of the next of kin of Shanahan, claimed to have been caused by his death while in the employ of the defendant, resulting from the negligence of the latter. Shanahan at the time of his death was engaged in a class of work to which the Workmen's Compensation Law applied and would have provided compensation for a widow or certain designated next of kin if he had left them, and the defendant as employer had complied with the requirements of the statute. Shanahan, however, left no widow or next of kin meeting the description of those entitled to compensation under the act, his next of kin in whose behalf this action is brought being adult brothers and sisters who are not entitled to compensation under the act. The answer which has been held insufficient set up the Compensation Law as a bar to this action, and thereby the question has been presented which we are called on to determine-whether the Workmen's Compensation Law in the classes of employment therein enumerated, when an employer complies with its requirements, provides a right of compensation for death and a remedy therefor which are exclusive of all other rights or remedies, even though it happens in a particular case that the decedent has left no widow or next of kin who are entitled to benefits under the act, but has left next of kin not entitled to such benefits.

[1] The statutory provisions which for many years before the enactment of the Workmen's Compensation Law permitted the present form of action to be maintained against an employer to recover damages on behalf of the next of kin of an employé who had met his death as the result of his employer's negligence, were deemed so important that the right of action was in 1894 protected by a constitutional provision. Section 18 of article 1 of the state Constitution provided:

‘The right of action now existing to recover damages for injuries resulting in death, shall never be abrogated; and the amount recoverable shall not be subject to any statutory limitation.’

At the time this amendment was adopted our statutes defined next of kin in whose behalf such action might be maintained and included adult brothers and sisters. Code Civ. Pro. §§ 1903, 1905.

In defense of the present Compensation Law against any charge of unconstitutional interference with the rights thus secured, it is urged that while this constitutionalprovision prohibited the abrogation of a ‘cause of action’ arising from the negligent killing of an employé, the Legislature was not thereby inhibited from changing the classes of persons in whose behalf as next of kin such cause of action might be enforced, and that, therefore, the Compensation Law may be regarded as merely changing the definition of next of kin who are entitled to relief in case of death by dropping therefrom adult brothers and sisters. Amendments in respect of the persons who should be entitled to damages which might be collected under the statute which have thus far been unchallenged in the courts are referred to as sustaining this view, and they do perhaps furnish support for it. Thus Laws 1913, c. 756, provides that the term ‘next of kin’ shall mean both the father and the mother in certain cases, and Laws 1911, c. 122, excluded the next of kin, e. g., the father, in favor of the wife or husband in certain cases. In the view which I take of the later constitutional amendment and of the provisions of the Compensation Law adopted in pursuance thereof, it will not be necessary to decide this proposition.

In 1910 the first Workmen's Compensation Law was passed. Laws 1910, c. 674. It was held to be unconstitutional because it imposed liability without fault and thus took property without due process of law. Ives v. South Buffalo Ry. Co., 201 N. Y. 271, 94 N. E. 431, 34 L. R. A. (N. S.) 162, Ann. Cas. 1912B, 156. Thereafter in 1913 the amendment to the Constitution was made (article 1, § 19), which gave to the Legislature plenary power to enact workmen's compensation laws. So far as material it reads as follows:

‘Nothing contained in this Constitution shall be construed to limit the power of the Legislature to enact laws for the protection of the lives, health, or safety of employés; or for the payment, either by employers, or by employers and employés or otherwise, either directly or through a state or other system of insurance or otherwise, of compensation for injuries to employés or for death of employés resulting from such injuries without regard to fault as a cause thereof, * * * or to provide that the right of such compensation, and the remedy therefor shall be exclusive of all other rights and remedies for injuries to employés or for death resulting from such injuries; or to provide that the amount of such compensation for death shall not exceed a fixed or determinable sum: Provided that all moneys paid by an employer to his employés or their legal representatives, by reason of the enactment of any of the laws herein authorized, shall be held to be a proper charge in the cost of operating the business of the employer.’

Thereafter the present Workmen's Compensation Law was passed. Laws 1914, c. 41.

At the times involved in this action section 10 of the law read in part:

‘ Liability for Compensation. Every employer subject to the provisions of this chapter shall pay or provide as required by this chapter compensation according to the schedules of this article for the disability or death of his employé resulting from an accidental personal injury sustained by the employé arising out of and in the course of his employment, without regard to fault as a cause of such injury, except where the injury is occasioned by the willful intention of the injured employé to bring about the injury or death of himself or of another, or where the injury results solely from the intoxication of the injured employé while on duty.’

Section 11 provided:

‘ Alternative Remedy. The liability prescribed by the last preceding section shall be exclusive, except that if an employer fail to secure the payment of compensation for his injured employés and their dependents as provided in section fifty of this chapter, an injured employé, or his legal representative in case death results from the injury, may, at his option, elect to claim compensation under this chapter, or to maintain an action in the courts for damages on account of such injury. * * *’

Section 16, under the title ‘Death Benefits,’ provided that in cases where the injury caused death, the compensationshould be known as a death benefit and should be payable, first in satisfaction of reasonable funeral expenses not exceeding $100 and thereafter in the amounts and to the persons therein named, including, under the conditions and with the rights of priority fixed by the section, a surviving wife, or a dependent husband and children under, the age of 18 years, until they shall reach the age of 18 years; dependent parents and grandparents.

Subdivision 4 specially provided that:

‘If the amount payable to surviving wife (or dependent husband) and to children under the age of eighteen years shall be less in the aggregate than sixty-six and two-thirds per centum of the average wages of the deceased, then for the support of grandchildren or brothers and sisters under the age of eighteen years, if dependent upon the deceased at the time of the accident, fifteen per centum of such wages for the support of each such person until of the age of eighteen years; and for the support of each parent, or grandparent, of the deceased if dependent upon him at the time of the accident, per centum of such wages during such dependency. But in no case shall the aggregate amount payable under this subdivision exceed the difference between sixty-six and two-thirds per centum of such wages, and the amount payable as hereinbefore provided to surviving wife for dependent husband) or for the support of surviving child or children.’

The constitutional amendment added in 1913 overrides all else in the state Constitution. ‘Nothing contained in this Constitution shall be construed to limit the power of the Legislature to enact’ (employés compensation laws) is the comprehensive language used and this excludes the limitations of section 18 of article 1 relative to damages for injuries causing death as well as the limitations of section 6 of article 1 relative to taking property without due process of law: It permits the Legislature to fix the right to compensation to be paid by an employer for death resulting to an employé from injuries received in the course of his employment and to provide that ‘the right of such compensation, and the remedy therefor shall be exclusive of all other rights and remedies * * * for death.’ It authorizes the Legislature to adopt an employés compensation system and to define who should be entitled to relief for damages without any state constitutional limitation whatever.

The statute which was adopted in...