Weinberg v. State Workmen's Ins. Fund

• Decision Date: 27 June 1951
• Parties: WEINBERG et al. v. STATE WORKMEN'S INS. FUND.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

81 A.2d 906

368 Pa. 76

WEINBERG et al. v. STATE WORKMEN'S INS. FUND.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

June 27, 1951

Suit by Bertram U. Weinberg and others trading as Poco Highland Camps against the State Workmen's Insurance Fund upon a workmen's compensation insurance policy. The Court of Common Pleas for the County of Dauphin as of January Term 1950, No. 566, William H. Neely, J., entered judgment for defendant and plaintiffs appealed. The Supreme Court, No. 26 May Term, 1951, Stern, J., held that the State Workmen's Insurance Fund was bound to reimburse the employer to the extent of liability of employer to injured employee under state Workmen's Compensation Act.

Reversed and remanded, with a procedendo.

Bell J., dissented.

Israel Packe, Paul Weinblatt, Speiser, Satinsky, Gilliland & Packel, Philadelphia, for appellant.

C. A. Whitehouse, S. H. Torchia, Asst. Counsel, Ralph H. Behney, Counsel, State Workmen's Ins. Fund, Harrisburg, Robert E. Woodside, Atty. Gen., for appellee.

Before DREW, C. J., and STERN, STEARNE, JONES, BELL, LADNER and CHIDSEY, JJ.

HORACE STERN, Justice.

This is a suit on a workmen's compensation policy of the State Workmen's Insurance Fund. In our opinion the learned court below misconceived the nature and extent of the obligation assumed by the Fund under that policy, and, as a result, erroneously sustained preliminary objections to plaintiffs' complaint and entered judgment for defendant.

The State Workmen's Insurance Fund was created by the Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 762, 77 P.S. § 201 et seq. By section 3 of that Act it was provided that certain sums to be paid by employers should constitute a Fund for the purpose of insuring such employers against liability under article three of the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1915, 77 P.S § 411 et seq., and of assuring the payment of the compensation therein provided. Section 20 provided that any subscriber to the Fund, upon giving notice of an accident sustained by an employee in the course of his employment, should be discharged from all liability for the payment of compensation for the personal injury or death of such employee by such accident; and all such compensation due therefor, under article three of the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1915, should be paid out of the Fund. Section 21 provided that the Fund might be said, in the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin County, to enforce any right given to any subscriber under the Act.

Plaintiffs subscribed to the Fund, paid the required premiums, and, in 1941, obtained from it its standard workmen's compensation policy, which was renewed from year to year.

Plaintiffs operated a summer camp for children in Monroe County. They engaged, in New Jersey, one Esther Gotkin as ‘ camp mother’, who, on July 12, 1944, in the course of her employment at the camp, slipped on the steps of the mess hall and was injured. On June 20, 1945 she filed a claim petition for compensation with the Bureau of Workmen's Compensation of the Department of Labor and Industry at Harrisburg, but allowed the claim to be dismissed on December 27, 1945 for want of prosecution.^[1] On March 4, 1946 she filed a claim for compensation with the Workmen's Compensation Bureau of the New Jersey Department of Labor at Trenton; on that claim she received an award upon which she recovered judgment in the former Supreme Court of New Jersey, and on appeal to the present Supreme Court of that State the judgment was affirmed, Gotkin v. Weinberg, 2 N.J. 305, 66 A.2d 438. It may at this point be noted that a workman who enters into a contract of employment in a State in which a Workmen's Compensation Act is in force can recover compensation under the Act in that State for an injury sustained in the course of his employment, even though the harm was suffered in another State.Rest. Conflict of Laws, § 398. He may likewise recover in a State in which he sustains injury under the Workmen's Compensation Act of that State, although the contract of employment was made in another State. Id. § 399. Proceedings may be brought in a State under the Workmen's Compensation Act of that State, if it is applicable, although the Act of another State also is applicable. Id. § 402. Mrs. Gotkin was therefore entitled to recover judgment on her claim in New Jersey, as the Supreme Court of that State properly held.

The State Workmen's Insurance Fund refused to defend the proceedings in New Jersey or to reimburse plaintiffs for the compensation payments they were obliged to make to Mrs. Gotkin as the result of those proceedings and for costs and expenditures in connection therewith, amounting in all to the sum of $2,740, to recover which the present suit was brought.

The action of the court below in entering judgment for defendant was based upon the theory that the Fund was not responsible to its subscribers who might be obliged to pay compensation to an injured employee as the result of proceedings in another State, but only where the claim for compensation was prosecuted by the employee in Pennsylvania. The view apparently confuses the Fund's liability for the payment of compensation due because of the injury to the employee, and its liability for the payment of a judgment obtained by the employee in an action to enforce payment of compensation; the latter obligation does not exist under the policy except to the extent of the amount of compensation due under the Workmen's Compensation Law; the former obligation does exist and is the one here asserted.

The policy provides that ‘ The Fund agrees with the employer * * * I. * * (a) To pay to any person entitled thereto under and in the manner provided by the Workmen's Compensation Law, any sum due or to become due because of the obligation for compensation for any such injury * * * imposed upon the employer under the Workmen's Compensation Law * * *. (b) To assume the whole liability of the employer for the payment of compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Law * * *. III. * * * To defend, in the name and on behalf of the employer, any suits or other proceedings alleging such injuries * * * and...