Texas Employers' Ins. Ass'n v. Boudreaux

• Decision Date: 01 June 1921
• Docket Number: (No. 234-3417.)
• Citation: 231 S.W. 756
• Parties: TEXAS EMPLOYERS' INS. ASS'N v. BOUDREAUX et al.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

231 S.W. 756

TEXAS EMPLOYERS' INS. ASS'N v. BOUDREAUX et al.

(No. 234-3417.)

Commission of Appeals of Texas, Section A.

June 1, 1921.

Error to Court of Civil Appeals of Ninth Supreme Judicial District.

Proceedings under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Mrs. Regina Boudreaux to obtain compensation for the death of her husband, opposed by the Gulf Production Company, subscriber, and the Texas Employers' Insurance Association. From a judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals (213 S. W. 674) affirming an award of compensation, the Insurance Association brings error. Judgment of Court of Civil Appeals reversed, and cause remanded to that court for a review of findings and the conclusion of trial court with respect to whether case was one calling for a lump sum award and for further orders.

Harry P. Lawther, of Dallas, for plaintiff in error.

Crook, Lord, Lawhon & Ney, of Beaumont, and Gremillion & Smith, of Crowley, La., for defendants in error.

TAYLOR, P. J.

The Gulf Production Company was a subscriber to the Employers' Liability Act, as amended in 1917 (Acts 1917, c. 103 [Vernon's Ann. Civ. St. Supp. 1918, §§ 5246—1-5246—91]), and carried a policy of insurance with the Texas Employers' Insurance Association. Israel Boudreaux was in the employ of the production company and was covered by the policy. Boudreaux sustained injuries while so employed which resulted in his death. The deceased left surviving him a wife and three children, two of whom were minors. The other was a married daughter, neither a minor nor dependent upon the father for support.

The Industrial Accident Board found that the wife and two minor children were entitled to receive as compensation under the act the weekly sum of $11.15; that the attorneys representing the beneficiaries were entitled to receive for their services 15 per cent. of the first $1,000 to be paid the beneficiaries by the insurance association and 10 per cent. of the remainder. The Board further found that the amounts to be paid both the beneficiaries and the attorneys should be paid in weekly instalments as they accrued. An award was made by the Board in accordance with the findings.

The insurance association, plaintiff in error, brought this suit to set aside the award of the Board. Trial was before the court without a jury, and resulted, in part, in the court's setting aside the award. Judgment was rendered, however, against the association; but the award, instead of being made payable in weekly benefits, was made payable in a lump sum, on the ground that the case was a special one in which manifest hardship and injustice would result unless the compensation was required to be so paid.

The judgment was for $3,446.75, one-third to be paid the attorneys representing the beneficiaries, and two-thirds to be paid the beneficiaries. Under the terms of the decree one half of the amount awarded the beneficiaries was made payable to the widow of the deceased, and the other half, to the two minor children in equal parts.

There were two assignments of error in the Court of Civil Appeals; First, that the trial court erred in adjudging the case a special one where hardship would, result from paying the compensation in weekly instalments rather than in a lump sum; second, that the court erred in distributing the amount awarded the wife and minor children in the proportion of one-half to the wife and one-fourth each to the two children, rather than equally among the three.

The Court of Civil Appeals overruled the assignments, under the view that the compensation awarded defendants in error was distributed as required by the terms of the act; and under the further view that the findings and conclusions of the trial judge as to whether compensation should be paid in a lump sum were final and conclusive, and not subject to be reviewed on appeal. 213 S. W. 674.

The assignments of error contained in the application for the writ are that the Court of Civil Appeals erred in overruling the assignments set out, substantially, above.

Plaintiff in error points out, in connection with its contentions made under the assignment relating to the distribution of compensation, that title to the compensation does not come to the beneficiaries by inheritance from the deceased, but vests in them originally; that the act names the beneficiaries and provides that they alone shall receive compensation; that no provision is made in the act for the payment of a greater proportion of compensation to one beneficiary than to the other; that the act makes no reference to either separate or community property or to different degrees of relationship to the deceased, or to the whole blood or half blood, or to bastards, such as is made in the statutes of descent and distribution; that it includes among the beneficiaries named stepmothers, who are not named in those statutes; and insists that by reason of the matters pointed out the compensation awarded the beneficiaries should be distributed among them equally.

The effect of the contention made is to place an unwarranted limitation upon the office of the statutes of descent and distribution in the administration of the act. It is true that the provision of the act naming the classes of beneficiaries both modifies and limits the operation of the statutes, but to such extent only as arises from the fact that not all of those designated as heirs in the statutes are designated as beneficiaries under the act, and from the further fact that one class, stepmothers, is designated by the act that is not named in the statutes.

In the original draft of section 8a, besides the surviving husband and wife, only dependent parents, dependent children, and dependent brothers and sisters of the deceased employé were designated as beneficiaries. By amendment adopted while the section was under consideration, two other classes of beneficiaries were added, dependent grandparents and dependent stepmothers. House Journal, 35th Legislature, p. 1082.

It is not necessary to decide what the proper rule of distribution would be in a case in which a stepmother is claimant as a beneficiary. Suffice it to say in this case that the amendment, merely adding, as it does, a class of beneficiaries not known to the inheritance statutes, did not have the effect of changing the original plan of ...