Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co. v. Harris

• Decision Date: 28 June 1928
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 994
• Citation: 218 Ala. 130,117 So. 755
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court
• Parties: SLOSS-SHEFFIELD STEEL & IRON CO. v. HARRIS.

117 So. 755

218 Ala. 130

SLOSS-SHEFFIELD STEEL & IRON CO. v. HARRIS.

6 Div. 994

Supreme Court of Alabama

June 28, 1928

Certiorari to Circuit Court, Jefferson County; Richard V. Evans, Judge.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by May Belle Harris against the Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Company to recover compensation on account of the death of petitioner's husband, an employee. Judgment awarding compensation, and the employer brings certiorari. Reversed and remanded.

Bradley Baldwin, All & White, W.M. Neal, and S.M. Bronaugh, all of Birmingham, for appellant.

S.R Hartley, of Birmingham, for appellee.

SOMERVILLE J.

Subdivision (j) of section 7596 of the Code (Workmen's Compensation Act) declares:

"Personal Injuries, etc.--Without otherwise affecting either the meaning or interpretation of the abridged clause injuries by an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment, it is hereby declared: *** [It] shall not include an injury caused by the act of a third person or fellow employee intended to injure the employee because of reasons personal to him, and not directed against him as an employee, or because of his employment."

We have several times discussed and applied this provision of the law. Garrett v. Gadsden Cooperage Co., 209 Ala. 223, 96 So. 188; Ex parte Coleman, 211 Ala. 248, 100 So. 114; Ex parte Terry, 211 Ala. 418, 100 So. 768; Martin v. Sloss-Sheffield S. & I. Co., 216 Ala. 500, 113 So. 578. As noted in the Garrett and Coleman Cases, supra, it expresses a limitation upon the phrase "arising out of" the employment which has been substantially declared by most of the courts as a logical limitation without the coercion of a statutory definition like ours. 15 A.L.R. 594-596; 21 A.L.R. 758.

In Ex parte Coleman, supra, we said:

"The burden is on the plaintiff to reasonably satisfy the trial court that the accident arose out of and in the course of the workman's employment, and, where there is any substantial legal evidence in support of the finding of the trial court, the judgment, whether affirmative or negative, will not be disturbed on appeal. From the fact alone of a wilful assault upon the workman, it cannot be presumed that it arose out of his employment. That conclusion must be drawn, if at all, from the circumstances of the case, or from the testimony of witnesses, tending to show the causal relation of the employment to the injury; and 'the rational mind must be able to trace the resultant personal injury to a proximate cause set in motion by the employment and not by some other agency.' Madden's Case, 222 Mass. 487, 495, 111 N.E. 379, 383, L.R.A.1916D, 1000."

As will be seen from the reporter's statement above, the essential facts found by the trial court are: That defendant's watchman, Tarwater, had an altercation with a negro employee, Isom Carter, on Saturday afternoon, while trying to keep the pay roll line in order; that this negro went away and returned in a short while with his brother Will Carter, both of them being armed; that these negroes then approached Tarwater, who was...