United States v. Standard Oil Co.

• Citation: 60 F. Supp. 807
• Decision Date: 18 May 1945
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 4204-Y.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of California
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. STANDARD OIL CO. OF CALIFORNIA et al.

60 F. Supp. 807

UNITED STATES v. STANDARD OIL CO. OF CALIFORNIA et al.

Civil Action No. 4204-Y.

District Court, S. D. California, Central Division.

May 18, 1945.

Charles H. Carr, U. S. Atty., and Ronald Walker and Cameron L. Lillie, Asst. U. S. Attys., all of Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff.

Jennings & Belcher by Frank B. Belcher, all of Los Angeles, Cal., for defendants.

YANKWICH, District Judge.

At six-thirty A. M. on the 7th day of February, 1944, John Etzel, an enlisted man in the Armed Forces of the United States Government, was crossing Figueroa Street in the City of Los Angeles, on the south side of Eighth Street. Before stepping down from the curb to the pavement, he looked north and saw a semi-trailer oil truck, belonging to the defendant Standard Oil Company of California, and then driven by one of its employees, the co-defendant Ira Boone. The truck was at a distance of some seventy-five feet from the intersection. It was early in the morning and still dark. The automatic traffic signals were not operating. Etzel stepped into the street and crossed easterly, at all times remaining within the confines of the marked pedestrian zone.

Figueroa Street is fifty-six feet wide at that intersection. At a distance of about twenty-four feet from the curb, Etzel was hit by the truck. It is not clear what portion of the truck hit him. But from the fact that he had a large gash on the side of his head, the inference is justified that he came in contact with the right side of the truck, and that the head injury was caused by the handle of the door. He was thrown to the ground. In addition to the injury to his head, Etzel suffered injuries to his face and left thigh and had contusions, lacerations and abrasions over his entire body. He was hospitalized and was unable to perform his tasks as a soldier for twenty-nine days.

By this action, the Government seeks to recover the sum of $192.56. Of this sum, $123.25 is the cost of Etzel's hospitalization. As to this amount, there is a stipulation that it is the fair and reasonable value of the hospital care necessarily required for Etzel as a result of the injuries suffered. While the stipulation does not concede the necessity for the hospitalization, this fact flows from the obligation of the Government to care for persons in the military service, both under Congressional enactments and Army regulations.¹ The sum of $69.31 represents the wages paid to Etzel while he was incapacitated. There is no stipulation as to, or proof of, the reasonableness of the amount so paid. But, as the pay of enlisted men is fixed by Section 9 of the Pay Readjustment Act of June 16, 1942,² it must be assumed that the wages decreed by the Congress are reasonable.

And disability does not relieve the Government of the obligation to pay the wages prescribed.

We have to determine whether the Government is entitled to recover.

The defendants have challenged this right upon several grounds.

First, we must answer the question whether the Government of the United States has the right to sue for the cost of hospitalization of, and wages paid to, a soldier during the time he was incapacitated, through the tortious act of another. There are no precedents controlling. Strange as it may seem, the question has not arisen in peace time or during any of the wars in which large numbers of men were in the active service of the Armed Forces of the United States. There are state court decisions dealing with the status of persons enlisted in the state militia. They do not help. They concerned attempts of persons injured while in the militia to recover under State Workmen's Compensation Acts. The rulings are both ways. Some cases deny the right to recover upon the ground that a person while an active member of a state militia is not an employee.³ Other cases decide the contrary.⁴ Neither group is very persuasive on the question before us.

Workmen's compensation is based upon a theory which places responsibility for injuries upon industry regardless of fault. When applying this doctrine, the inclusion of any person within the beneficiary groups reflects largely the approach of the court to the problem and the range of its interpretation of a specific enactment. A narrow approach restricts the group, while a broad one, having in view the beneficial social aims to be achieved, enlarges it.⁵ However, we are not without signposts to guide us in determining the question. And we can do so without adopting the strict theory of master and servant which the Government asserts. For, ultimately, we are confronted with the fact that courts now take a less circumscribed view of the relation than they did in the past. The trend is to hold that almost any association in which a person is subject to the control of another may be considered as a master-servant relation. Courts apply to it, especially when dealing with the harm which third persons may do to it, the rules of liability which would flow from a strict relation of master and servant.⁶ At the common law, the master could recover for loss of services resulting from a tort committed on the servant of a third person.⁷ By analogy, a parent was given the right to recover for loss of the services of his child,⁸ and a husband for those of his wife.⁹ And these actions are entirely independent of the right of the servant, child, or wife to recover for the injuries themselves.¹⁰

When a man becomes a soldier, a status is created whether the soldier enlists voluntarily or is selected under a Selective Service law.¹¹ A voluntary enlistment originates in a contract for a definite period. But there any similarity between it and other contractual relationships, such as master and servant, ceases. The essence of the relation of master and servant is the freedom of the servant to end it, subject, of course, to responsibility for wrongful termination. But even a volunteer cannot withdraw from the army during the period of enlistment. Wrongful ending or even long, unexcused absence, is punishable as a crime both in peace and in war time.¹² The obligations which the Government assumes towards a soldier are more legislative than contractual. The Congress of the United States, in the exercise of its war powers, has either defined those obligations or allowed the army establishment to decree them pursuant to a defined congressional policy. In time of emergency, or war, the distinction between the volunteer and the draftee disappears. The aim of the Congress has been to apply all the rules ordained for the comparatively small army maintained in time of peace to the large citizens' army called up by the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940 and its later amendments.¹³ So the upshot of the matter is this: A special relation has been created. Whether we call it a status, as some of the older cases do, or whether we just call it Government and soldier relation, it is clear that both the soldier and the Government have certain rights and obligations arising from it and that a third party who, through his tortious act, interferes with it to the detriment of the Government, is responsible for the mischief he causes. And he cannot avoid responsibility for his act by claiming that the relation is one for which the common law did not have a name. The relation is an actuality. And in the light of the modern trend to protect individuals and categories from outside tortious or even non-tortious interference,¹⁴ the Government, which, through the negligent act of a third party, is put to the expense of hospitalizing a soldier and loses his services during a period for which it is compelled to pay him his wages, has a claim cognizable in this court.

An English case which arose during the last war sustains these views. The English Crown sought to recover for medical expenses, hospital treatment and wages of two air craftsmen of the Royal Air Force, who had been injured in a collision. The Crown's right to recover was sustained in these words:

"As regards the claim in respect of wages, it is essentially a claim based upon the old common law principle that a master who has, by the tortious act of a third person, been deprived of the services of his servant may claim damages in respect of that deprivation against the third person who has brought it about. There is not, I think, any doubt that a right of action by a master for the loss of the services of his servant exists and has been recognized from early times. Curiously enough it has perhaps been kept in activity most frequently as the fictitious basis, and the only basis, for the action of seduction by which the seducer of a woman or girl may be made to pay the penalty of his wrongdoing. The Solicitor General referred me to several cases based upon that principle, beginning with Hall v. Hollander, 4 B & C 660 in 1825, and perhaps most noticeably exemplified in Evans v. Walton L. R. 2 C.P. 615. It is well settled that when by the tort of a third party a master has lost the services of his servant he can recover damages in respect of that loss of service. The amount of his damages is, of course, dependent upon the facts of the particular case. If he has got a substitute to do the work of the servant, his damages may be the extra cost to which he has been put over and above the payment he makes to the servant who is incapacitated. If he has put an end temporarily to the contract of service of the injured servant and pays him nothing, his damages would be the amount, if any, that he has to pay to the substitute. The payment, if any, that he makes to the substitute may of course be equal to, more than or less than the wage of the injured servant. On the other hand, where he does not employ a substitute, if he continues to pay the wages to the injured servant, he clearly loses any benefit arising from that payment, because he is getting nothing in return for it. In that case, therefore, his damages are, prima facie, the amount of the wages...