Thomassen v. West St. Louis Water & Light Company
Citation | 278 S.W. 979,312 Mo. 150 |
Decision Date | 22 December 1925 |
Docket Number | 25084 |
Parties | HORTENSE THOMASSEN v. WEST ST. LOUIS WATER & LIGHT COMPANY et al., Appellants |
Court | United States State Supreme Court of Missouri |
Transferred from St. Louis Court of Appeals.
Judgment of Circuit Court affirmed.
A. & J. F. Lee, James A. Waechter and Joseph Renard for appellants.
The demurrer of the defendant water company should have been sustained because Miller was an independent contractor while operating his own machine for hire, without direction or control of its operation by said water company. Calhoon v. Mining Co., 202 Mo.App. 564; Mullich v Broker, 119 Mo.App. 332; O'Neil v. Blase, 94 Mo.App. 648; Allen v. Coglizer, 208 S.W. 102; Spelman v. Delano, 177 Mo.App. 28; Peters v. Ry Co., 150 Mo.App. 721; Porter v. Withers Estate Co., 201 Mo.App. 27; Long v. Moon, 107 Mo. 334; Crenshaw v. Ullman, 113 Mo. 633; Gayle v. Car Co., 177 Mo. 427; Funk v. Furnace Co., 82 Mo. 276; O'Hara v. Laclede Gas L. Co., 244 Mo. 395; Kipp v. Oyster, 133 Mo.App. 711; Simmons v. Murray, 234 S.W. 1012; Standard Oil Co. v. Anderson, 212 U.S. 215.
Joseph C. McAtee for respondent.
To obtain the shield of an independent contractor, the owner or proprietor must, first, select a competent and fit person, engaged in an independent calling; second, the work committed to him must be neither attended with danger to others, nor unlawful; third, the contractor must be allowed to do the work according to his own methods and only subject to control by the owner as to the results of his work. Without the concurrence of each, and all of these conditions, the condition of independent contractor cannot legally exist. Dillon v. Hunt, 82 Mo. 150, 65 L. R. A. 459; Salmon v. Kansas City, 241 Mo. 57; Loth v. Theatre Co., 197 Mo. 354; Jensen v. Barbour, 15 Mont. 582; O'Neill v. Blase, 94 Mo.App. 648; Mullich v. Brocker, 119 Mo.App. 338.
OPINION
Plaintiff recovered judgment against the defendants for damages in the sum of $ 3,000 for the killing of her husband, which, on appeal to the St. Louis Court of Appeals was affirmed by the majority opinion as against the defendant Frederick Miller, and reversed as to the defendant the West St. Louis Water & Light Company. One of the judges deeming the decision of the majority reversing the judgment against the corporate defendant, contrary to the decisions of this court, the case was accordingly certified and transferred to this court, as required by Section 6 of the Amendment of 1884 to our Constitution. The majority and minority opinions, which are reported in 251 S.W. 450, fully state the facts in the case. Briefly, they are: The corporate defendant had laborers employed at a distance from their homes and, in addition to their wages, it had agreed to convey them to and from their place of work. A man by the name of Harris had conveyed some of the laborers to their place of work on the morning of July 13, 1918. During the afternoon he telephoned the defendant Miller, the foreman of the company, that his automobile was broken. In similar exigencies on former occasions, Miller had taken the workmen to their homes in his truck and received three dollars from the company for each trip. This was in accordance with an understanding he had with the manager of the company. On the evening in question, pursuant to this understanding, he took some of the workmen to their homes in his truck, and, as the jury found on substantial evidence, negligently ran his truck against plaintiff's husband on a public highway, inflicting injuries from which he died in a few hours. As said in the dissenting opinion: "It appears that Miller was not engaged in an independent occupation or employment as a carrier of passengers, had not done such work for any one else, and only occasionally did it for the company."
There is no disagreement about the facts. It was held in the majority opinion that in carrying the workmen to and from their work, Miller was acting in the capacity of an independent contractor and that the company was not liable to respond in damages for the negligent killing of plaintiff's husband.
We do not think, as held in the majority opinion, that it can be said, as a matter of law, that in carrying the workmen to their homes Miller was acting as an independent contractor. We think the dissenting opinion of Allen, P. J., correctly declares the law in this respect. In Flori v. Dolph, 192 S.W. 949, at foot of column 2, p. 950, Bond, J., quoted approvingly from a standard authority, as follows:
See also O'Hara v. Laclede Gas Light Co., 244 Mo. l. c. 409, 148 S.W. 884; Loth v. Columbia Theater Co., 197 Mo. l. c. 354, 94 S.W. 847.
In Mullich v. Brocker, 119 Mo.App. l. c. 337, 97 S.W. 549, Goode, J., said: "When a person is an independent contractor and when merely a servant, are questions that have engaged the attention of the appellate tribunals of this State frequently; and yet we should hesitate to say that any test of universal application has been prescribed. Among others these cases may be consulted on the subject: Barry v. St. Louis, 17 Mo. 121; Morgan v. Bowman, 22 Mo. 538; Hilsdorf v. St. Louis, 45 Mo. 98; Fink v. Furnace Co., 82 Mo. 276; O'Neill v. Blase, 94 Mo.App. 648. In the recent case of Gayle v. Foundry Co., 177 Mo. 427, 446, the Supreme Court approved the following rule, taken from the work of Judge Thompson on Negligence, vol. 2, p. 899:
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