Snowbarger v. M. F. A. Central Co-op.

• Decision Date: 10 November 1958
• Docket Number: No. 46479,46479
• Citation: 317 S.W.2d 390
• Parties: Leota SNOWBARGER, Guardian of Marie Brown, Respondent, v. M. F. A. CENTRAL COOPERATIVE, Employer, Appellant. M. F. A. Mutual Insurance Company, Insurer, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 390

317 S.W.2d 390

Leota SNOWBARGER, Guardian of Marie Brown, Respondent, v. M. F. A. CENTRAL COOPERATIVE, Employer, Appellant M. F. A. Mutual Insurance Company, Insurer, Appellant.

No. 46479.

Supreme Court of Missouri, En Banc.

Nov. 10, 1958.

Howard F. Major, Columbia, James A. McGee, Columbia, for appellants.

L. F. Cottey, Lancaster, Clare Magee, Unionville, for respondent.

COIL, Commissioner.

In this workmen's compensation case the referee's award of a death benefit in the amount of $8,535 to the legally appointed guardian of deceased employee's widow who had been adjudged non compos mentis, and $400 and $100 for burial and medical expenses, respectively, was reversed by the final award of the Industrial Commission of Missouri which denied any compensation. On appeal the circuit court entered its judgment reversing the final award of the industrial commission and remanding the case to the commission with directions 'to reinstate, approve, and affirm the findings and award of compensation made' theretofore by the referee. Appellants, employer and insurer, contend that the trial court erred in reversing the final award of the industrial commission for the reasons that under the undisputed evidence employee's death, as a matter of law, did not arise out of and in the course of his employment and because the industrial commission's findings that employee's death did not arise out of and in the course of his employment were supported by competent and substantial evidence on the whole record.

No one has questioned our jurisdiction. Respondent apparently agrees with appellants' statement that we have jurisdiction because of the monetary amount in dispute. We should always determine, however, whether this court has jurisdiction in each case because our jurisdiction is limited and not general. Article V, Section 3, Mo.Const. 1945, V.A.M.S.; Crow v. Missouri Implement Tractor Co., Mo., 292 S.W.2d 573, 574[1, 2]. The provisions of Article V, Section 3, supra, make it certain that if this court has jurisdiction of this case it is because of 'the amount in dispute.'

The Workmen's Compensation Act, Section 287.010 et seq., RSMo 1949, V.A.M.S., was approved in 1925 and probably since that time, and certainly since June 1930 (see Wahlig v. Krenning-Schlapp Grocer Co., 325 Mo. 677, 29 S.W.2d 128, 132) this court, either with or without discussion, has exercised jurisdiction in those workmen's compensation cases in which an amount in excess of $7,500 has been claimed or awarded as a 'single total death benefit' and wherein the question on appeal involved the total of the award claimed or made. The ascribed reason has been that at the time of the appeal in such cases the amount of the 'single total death benefit' was the monetary amount in dispute for purposes of determining appellate jurisdiction.

This division's most recent case in which jurisdiction was exercised on that theory is Conley v. Meyers, Mo., 304 S.W.2d 9. There appellant's motion to transfer to the Kansas City Court of Appeals on the ground that the monetary amount in dispute did not exceed $7,500 was overruled on the authority of Shroyer v. Missouri Livestock Commission Co., 332 Mo. 1219, 61 S.W.2d 713, 715[9-12], Sayles v. Kansas City Structural Steel Co., 344 Mo. 756, 128 S.W.2d 1046, 1050, and Ossery v. Burger-Baird Engraving Co., Mo., 256 S.W.2d 805, 807. One of the judges dissented on the ground that the 'question of our jurisdiction in Workmen's Compensation death cases should be re-examined.' No motion to transfer that case to banc was filed. Subsequently, the other division one judges adopted the view that the question of this court's jurisdiction in such cases should be re-examined. As will appear, our re-examination of the question has resulted in our conclusion that this court does not have jurisdiction of this workmen's compensation death case.

As pointed out in Shroyer v. Missouri Livestock Commission Co., supra, 61 S.W.2d 716, this court, prior to the date of that opinion (July 1933), had assumed and exercised jurisdiction without comment in other workmen's compensation death cases; for example, in these cases cited by the court in the Shroyer opinion: Dougherty v. Manhattan Rubber Mfg. Co., 325 Mo. 656, 29 S.W.2d 126; Wahlig v. Krenning-Schlapp Grocer Co., supra; Cassidy v. Eternit, 326 Mo. 342, 32 S.W.2d 75; Leilich v. Chevrolet Motor Co., 328 Mo. 112, 40 S.W.2d 601; Higgins v. Heine Boiler Co., 328 Mo. 493, 41 S.W.2d 565; Brauch v. Skinner Bros. Mfg. Co., 330 Mo. 760, 51 S.W.2d 27; Schulz v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 331 Mo. 616, 56 S.W.2d 126.

Also prior to the Shroyer opinion, this court held in Hohlstein v. St. Louis Roofing Co., 328 Mo. 899, 42 S.W.2d 573, that a judgment reflecting a workmen's compensation award of $20 per week for 300 weeks and $15 per week thereafter for life did not give this court jurisdiction for the reason that, inasmuch as the $6,000 resulting from the 300 weeks at $20 per week was not in dispute, the only amount in dispute was the $15 per week for life, and that thus the total of the amount in dispute was unknown. In answering the argument there made that if this court exercised jurisdiction in compensation death cases, it by analogy should also exercise jurisdiction in compensation non-death cases, the court pointed out that in each compensation death case in which this court had exercised jurisdiction, the 'single total death benefit' was in excess of $7,500; and that the reason this court had jurisdiction in such cases and not in a case, for example, in which an award for permanent total disability had been made, was that in death cases the statute provided for the award of a 'single total death benefit,' while the statute providing for permanent total disability payments did not provide for a 'single permanent total disability benefit' and that payments of any unaccrued balance to an injured employee would cease upon his death (42 S.W.2d 576).

Following the Hohlstein case, supra, this court en banc examined the question of its jurisdiction in workmen's compensation death cases in Shroyer v. Missouri Livestock Commission Co., supra, 61 S.W.2d 715[8, 9], 716. There the court reasoned that the time when the total of the monetary amount in actual dispute for jurisdictional purposes should be determined is the time when the appeal is taken. The court then pointed out that the final award in that case was 'To Jessie R. Shroyer the sum of $20.00 per week for 621.4 weeks * * * or until prior death or remarriage,' and that the judgment appealed from affirming that award recited that the dependent recover from employer and insurer 'the sum of twelve thousand four hundred twenty-eight ($12,428.00) dollars payable twenty ($20.00) dollars per week for 621.4 weeks or until the prior death or remarriage of said dependent.' The court then stated:

'From the foregoing it is apparent that the amount in dispute when the judgment was rendered and the appeal taken was $12,428 awarded as 'a single total death benefit' and made payable in installments as provided in subsection (b) of section 3319, R.S. 1929 (Mo.St.Ann. Sec. 3319(b). The possibility that this amount might thereafter be reduced by the death or remarriage of the defendant would obviously not change the amount that was actually in dispute at the time the judgment was rendered and the appeal allowed to this court. In Stuart v. Stuart, 320 Mo. 486, 488, 8 S.W.2d 613, it is well said that: 'Such jurisdiction must so appear at the time the appeal is taken; nothing that subsequently occurs may be invoked either to confer jurisdiction or to show that the appeal was one falling within our jurisdiction.' By the same course of reasoning it follows that the mere possibility of the subsequent happening of an event that would reduce the amount actually in dispute at the time the appeal was taken to $7,500 or less would not deprive this court of the pecuniary ground of jurisdiction shown by the amount then in dispute.' 61 S.W.2d 716.

Certainly, none will question that the amount in actual dispute for jurisdictional purposes is determined at the time an appeal is taken, and that nothing that subsequently occurs should be invoked to confer jurisdiction which did not exist at the time of the appeal, and that the possibility or contingency that a subsequent event will reduce the amount that was actually in dispute at the time an appeal was taken should not deprive the court of the jurisdiction which it had at the time of the appeal. Cf. Hunter v. Hunter, 355 Mo. 599, 197 S.W.2d 299, 300[3-5].

In our view the fallacy in the Shroyer opinion is the assumption that the amount actually in dispute at the time the appeal was taken was the amount of the 'single total death benefit.' In other words, the court in Shroyer reached the conclusion that simply because the judgment there encompassed an award of a 'single total death benefit' in excess of $7,500, the amount of such 'single total death benefit' was in dispute at the time the appeal was taken. Such a conclusion was fallacious because it was reached without considering or applying the well-established rule for determining the monetary amount in dispute at the time of an appeal, viz., that the transcript must affirmatively show that at the time of appeal there is in actual dispute, independent of all contingencies, an amount exceeding $7,500 exclusive of costs. That has been and is, at least in all cases other than workmen's compensation death cases, the invariable rule used to test the amount in dispute for jurisdictional purposes. In Stuart v. Stuart, 320 Mo. 486, 8 S.W.2d 613, after plaintiff-husband's divorce suit and defendant-wife's cross bill had been dismissed and after an affidavit for appeal had been filed by the wife from the judgment dismissing her cross bill and after...