Willis v. Taylor & Fenn Co.

• Decision Date: 03 April 1951
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: WILLIS v. TAYLOR & FENN CO. et al. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut

Page 821

79 A.2d 821

137 Conn. 626

WILLIS v. TAYLOR & FENN CO. et al.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

April 3, 1951.

Edward Seltzer, Hartford, for appellant (plaintiff).

Edward S. Pomeranz, Hartford, with whom, on the brief, was William P. Aspell, Hartford, for appellees (defendants).

Before BROWN, C. J., and JENNINGS, BALDWIN, INGLIS and O'SULLIVAN, JJ.

BROWN, Chief Justice.

The Superior Court dismissed the plaintiff's appeal from a finding and award of the workmen's compensation commissioner in favor of the defendants, the employer and its insurer, upon the ground that the plaintiff's injury did not arise out of the employment. The question upon the present appeal is whether the trial court was warranted in sustaining this finding.

The material facts in the commissioner's finding may be thus summarized: On April 26, 1949, the plaintiff and John Harrison were fellow employees. The plaintiff found offensive language written on his locker which he charged was the act of a fellow employee. An argument ensued between him and Harrison. The plaintiff drew something from his trousers pocket which Harrison maintained he believed to be a knife. Thereupon he picked up an iron rake and assaulted the plaintiff, striking him on the left arm and inflicting the injuries for which claim is made. The accident occurred during the course of the plaintiff's employment. The injuries were the result of a personal quarrel between the men involved which did not originate in the employment. The commissioner concluded, therefore, that the accident did not arise out of the employment but was the result of an assault caused by a personal quarrel between the two men.

The decisive question presented by the plaintiff's assignment of errors is whether the court was warranted in sustaining the commissioner's conclusion, that is, that the injuries did not arise out of the employment because they resulted from a personal quarrel which did not originate in the employment. We have stated the basic principle in such a case to be: 'If one employe assaults another employe solely to gratify his feeling of anger or hatred, the injury results from the voluntary act of the assailant, and cannot be said to arise either directly out of the employment or as an incident of it. But when the employe is assaulted while he is defending his employer, or his employer's property, or his employer's interests, or when the assault was incidental to some duty of his employment, the injuries he suffers in consequence of the assault will, as a rule, arise out of the employment.' Jacquemin v. Turner & Seymour Mfg. Co., 92 Conn. 382, 384, 103 A. 115, 116, L.R.A.1918E, 496; see also 58 Am.Jur. 766. We further stated in that opinion 92 Conn. at page 387, 103 A. at page 116, L.R.A.1918E, 496: 'The fact that employes sometimes quarrel and fight while at work does not make the injury which may...