Wing v. Cornwall Industries

• Decision Date: 18 August 1980
• Citation: 418 A.2d 177
• Parties: Jeffery R. WING v. CORNWALL INDUSTRIES and/or Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Company.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 177

418 A.2d 177

Jeffery R. WING v. CORNWALL INDUSTRIES and/or Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Company.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued June 6, 1980.

Decided Aug. 18, 1980.

John S. Jenness, Jr., South Paris, orally, for plaintiff.

Richardson, Tyler & Troubh, Ronald D. Russell, orally, Robert L. Hazard, Portland, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., WERNICK, NICHOLS, and GLASSMAN, JJ., and DELAHANTY, A. R. J WERNICK, Justice.

Jeffery Wing, a worker in the employ of Cornwall Industries, the employer, has appealed from a pro forma judgment entered in the Superior Court (Oxford County) which affirmed the decision of the Workers' Compensation Commission denying the worker's Petition for Award of Compensation on the ground that the worker was not in the course of his employment when he sustained the injury made the basis of his compensation claim. We deny the appeal and affirm the Superior Court judgment.

On February 5, 1979, the day he sustained his injury, Wing was employed by Cornwall Industries, working as a janitor. On his regular work time, he was proceeding through the plant moving a cart on which were two barrels filled with rubbish. Coming to a door leading out of the building, Wing tried to open it in order to take the barrels outside. The door strongly resisted opening, apparently because of a partial vacuum created by large exhaust fans inside that particular room. As soon as Wing did get the door open, suction caused by the opening of the resisting door pushed the barrels off the cart, and debris spilled on the floor. As he was trying to walk around one of the barrels, Wing tripped over it (or he may have kicked it). He then picked up a barrel, raised it over his head and threw it at the door. Wing thereupon walked to an adjoining room.

The evidence is conflicting as to what subsequently happened. Wing testified that after he walked into this other room, he was trying to regain his composure. He said that he turned to face the wall immediately to his right and that he brought his left hand up to the wall intending to rest his head on that hand and lean against the wall. As he was doing this, he testified, his left hand happened to strike against the wall causing injury to his left hand. However, another employee, who was in the room when Wing entered and who, at the time, was standing about twenty feet from Wing, testified that he saw Wing enter the room, pivot quickly to his (Wing's) right and punch the wall, the blow causing a loud noise.

The injury Wing sustained was a fracture of the fourth and fifth metacarpals of his left hand.

In denying the Petition for Award of Compensation, the Commissioner said:

"This Commission finds as a fact that Jeffery R. Wing sustained his injury as a result of a deliberate and intentional act on his part, which did not repeat not take place in the course of his employment." (emphasis in original)

Wing challenges the correctness of the Commissioner's conclusion, arguing that by analyzing the case under the standard of "course of the employment", the Commissioner was led astray. Apparently, the worker proceeds on the premise that it is not open to rational argument that he sustained his injury "in the course" of his employment. Hence, he contends that the Commissioner's analysis should have been directed to the causal relationship between his employment and his injury, as connoted by the legal standard "arising out of" the employment, more particularly so in light of the Commissioner's explicit reference to the worker's having sustained his injury "as a result of a deliberate and intentional act on his part." (emphasis added) The worker argues that had the Commissioner reasoned in the terms of causation, the Commissioner could not have avoided recognizing that stresses of the employment can be such as to generate emotional reactions of frustration and anger and that "deliberate and intentional" acts done by workers under the influence of such emotions can, therefore, "arise out of" the employment.

We reject Wing's contention that the Commissioner was legally wrong in analyzing the case in terms of the "in the course of" employment criterion and that it was error of law for the Commissioner to conclude that Wing sustained his injury outside the course of his employment.

To entitle the worker to an award of compensation his injury must both be sustained "in the course" and "arise out" of his employment; 39 M.R.S.A. § 51 (1978). Moreau v. Zayre Corp., Me., 408 A.2d 1289, 1292 (1979); Blackman v. Harris Baking Company, Me., 407 A.2d 21, 22-23 (1979); Wolfe v. Shorey, Me., 290 A.2d 892, 893 (1972).

The legal criterion "in the course of" employment directs attention basically to the temporal and spatial circumstances of the worker's sustaining of injury. See Moreau v. Zayre Corp., supra, 408 A.2d at 1292; Blackman v. Harris Baking Company, supra, 407 A.2d at 23; Gilbert v. Maheux, Me., 391 A.2d 1203, 1205 (1978); Fournier's Case, 120 Me. 236, 240, 113 A. 270 (1921). In more sharply refined terms it concentrates upon whether the worker's injury

"occurs within the period of the employment at a place where the employee reasonably may be in the performance of his duties and while he is fulfilling those duties or engaged in doing something incidental thereto." Fournier's Case, supra, 120 Me. at 240, 113 A. at 272.

It is, therefore, not enough to justify an award of compensation that the general employment situation has causal relation to a worker's injury, so that the injury may be said to "arise out of" the employment; it is further requisite that the sustaining of injury be particularly tied to a time, a place and the performance of employment duties, or the incidents thereof, such that the injury may be found to have originated "in the course of" employment.

Thus, in Sullivan's Case, 128 Me. 353, 147 A. 431 (1929) this Court sustained a Commissioner's conclusion that a worker sustained his injury outside the "course of his" employment when his hand was cut off by a moving cylinder of knives on a machine just after the worker, who had no immediate work to do in the vicinity of the machine and who was acting "out of curiosity" to see how the cloth being moved on a machine felt, had extended his hand onto the cloth moving on the machine. The rationale of decision was that the Commissioner was entitled to conclude that "the injury was the result of . . . (the worker's) own voluntary act, done only out of curiosity, entirely independent of any duty required to be performed or incidental thereto." Id., at 358, 147 A. at 432.

In Sullivan's Case this Court took pains to point out that the evidence provided rational support for the particular findings of fact made by the Commissioner. One such critical finding was that when the worker sustained his injury, he was at a place where he had no occasion to be in order to perform his work duties or to do something incidental to them. Sullivan thus teaches that a given set of circumstances may permit rational Commissioners properly to differ in making findings of fact regarding whether or not there has been such a deviation from the performance of work duties, or their reasonable incidents, as would lead to an ultimate conclusion that, correspondingly, the worker's injury did, or did not, occur "in the course of" the employment.

In light of this lesson of Sullivan, we...