Vaivida v. City of Grand Rapids

• Decision Date: 29 August 1933
• Docket Number: April Term.,No. 85,85
• Citation: 264 Mich. 204,249 N.W. 826
• Parties: VAIVIDA v. CITY OF GRAND RAPIDS.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

264 Mich. 204

249 N.W. 826

VAIVIDA

v.CITY OF GRAND RAPIDS.

No. 85, April Term.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Aug. 29, 1933.

Appeal from Department of Labor and Industry; Samuel H. Rhoads, Chairman.

Proceeding for compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act by August Vaivida, opposed by the City of Grand Rapids. From an award of compensation by the Department of Labor and Industry, the city appeals.

Award vacated.

Argued before the Entire Bench.

FEAD, J., McDONALD, C. J., and POTTER, J., dissenting.Dale Souter and Charles J. Zamiara, both of Grand Rapids, for appellant.

WIEST, Justice.

I am not in accord with the opinion of Mr. Justice FEAD.

The Workmen's Compensation Act (Comp. Laws 1929, § 8407 et seq.) has no common-law background and was originally bottomed on the idea that industry should assume liability as a part of the cost of production. It is true that the plan has been extended to encompass labor contracts in other fields, but, at first, and now, the relation must be one of contract and that of employer and employee.

Citizens needing public aid are in a sense wards of the municipality required to support them, and, if the able among them are set at work at common and unremunerative public tasks, there does not arise a contract of hire or the relation of employer and employee, but only a helping hand in behalf of public charity invoked and extended.

‘Municipalities called upon to support paupers have a right to their services and earnings to aid in their support.’ 48 C. J. p. 543.

This right does not arise out of contract at all but as a counterpart of the statutory duty to care for poor persons. Such persons are not in the employ of the municipality under the relation of master and servant, for such relation is neither contemplated nor does it in fact arise.

I am not prepared to hold that, where the statute requires a municipality to maintain the poor, the relation of master and servant under contract arises if the poor dependents are not left in idleness.

I think the award should be vacated.

The question being of public moment, there will be no costs.

CLARK, SHARPE, NORTH, and BUTZEL, JJ., concurred with WIEST, J.

FEAD, Justice (dissenting).

Plaintiff, while working for the city of Grand Rapids, was injured, and has been awarded workmen's compensation. The city reviews the award. Plaintiff is not represented by counsel. The question is whether plaintiff was an employee of the city, within Comp. Laws 1929, § 8413: ‘Every person in the service of the state, or of any county, city, township, incorporated village or school district therein, under any appointment, or contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, except any official of the state, or of any county, city, township, incorporated village or school district therein, elected at the polls.'

Defendant contends plaintiff was not an employee, but was a destitute person receiving aid from the city, under Comp. Laws 1929, § 8229: ‘That every poor person, who shall not be relieved or maintained by his relatives as provided in this act, shall be relieved and maintained by the county, in which he has gained a legal settlement, except as hereinafter provided in the case of counties in which the distinction between township, city and county poor shall not be abolished, in which case, he shall, in such counties, be relieved and maintained by the city or township in which he has a legal settlement.'

Defendant argues that plaintiff's work for the city was merely an incident in its administration of poor relief under the statute and he was not an employee.

Plaintiff began to receive aid from defendant in May, 1930. His right to help and the amount of relief were determined by city investigators. He performed no labor for the city in return for what he received. In October, 1930, however, defendant instituted the scrip relief plan under which persons receiving aid were ‘required’ to work if they were able. They received scrip which they could exchange for goods at the city store. The rate of scrip pay was 40 cents per hour. The city determined the number of hours' work per week on the basis of the needs of the applicant and his family, not on the value of the labor to the city. Plaintiff worked four hours per day at the weekly scrip pay of $9.60 until October 22, 1931, when he was changed to three hours per day at $7.20 per week. He was injured June 22, 1932, while working with a wheelbarrow in a city park.

The record is scanty, but we accept counsel's statement that the scrip relief plan was instituted with two objects: (1) To forestall and prevent unrest and possible disturbances engendered by the forced idleness of many men; and (2) to enable needy citizens to preserve their self-respect by returning services for public aid. We also accept the assertion that jobs were ‘made’ to provide work for as many persons as possible, and that many of the jobs were unnecessary and trivial. Of course, it must also be true that much or all of the work had some benefit to the city, utilitarian or aesthetic, although on a business basis the labor might have been deemed overpaid.

The purpose of the scrip plan of relief is laudable and its social effect undoubtedly good, but the relationship created between the parties in its execution is governed by what they did and not by why they did it. An employer remains an employer, although he runs his mill at a loss and for the purely humanitarian purpose of giving his workmen a living. Moreover, it is an open question whether the social features of the scrip plan are not better served by holding the relation to be that of employer and employee.

The question before us is a new one. The authorities disclose no similar cases, and they are of help only by way of suggestion.

In this state the right of a private charitable society to exact services in return for benefits, without establishing the relation of employer and employee, was held in Blust v. Sisters of Mercy, 256 Mich. 1, 239 N. W.401, in the case of a novitiate on probation to become a Sister of Mercy, on the ground that the relation was purely charitable and involved no hiring or commercialism.

Upon somewhat analogous grounds, an Eagle Boy Scout was...