Case ID: mass_252/html/0211-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Carroll, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

George Whitley, Jr.’s, Case.
    Suffolk.
    March 18, 1925.
    April 18, 1925.
    Present: Rugg, C.J., Pierce, Carroll, Wait, & Sanderson, JJ.
    
      Workmen’s Compensation Act, Injuries to which act applies.
    One, who is employed as an insurance solicitor and collector and whose employment requires him to use the public streets, is not entitled to compensation under the workmen's compensation act for injuries resulting from a fall on ice on a public sidewalk on which he was walking in the course of his employment, such injury not arising out of his employment.
    Certification to the Superior Court under the provisions of the workmen’s compensation act of a decision by the Industrial Accident Board, finding and ruling that an injury, suffered by the claimant while in the employ of John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company and caused by his slipping on ice on a public way, arose out of and in the course of his employment, and that he was entitled to compensation.
    In the Superior Court, the case was heard by Lummus, J. A decree was entered in accordance with the decision of the Industrial Accident Board. The insurer appealed.
    
      G. Gleason, for the insurer.
    
      B. J. Killion, for the employee.
   Carroll, J.

In this proceeding under the workman’s compensation act, it was found that the employee was an insurance solicitor and collector, whose business required him to use the public streets. He was walking on a public sidewalk in the course of his employment, when he slipped on the ice and fell. He was awarded compensation. The insurer’s appeal brings the case to this court.

It was decided in McNicol’s Case, 215 Mass. 497, that an injury does not arise out of the employment unless it follows as a natural incident of the employee’s work. If the injury cannot be traced to the employment as a contributing, proximate cause, but comes from a danger to which the employee is exposed, apart from his employment, or if the danger causing the injury was not peculiar to his work, but was common to the neighborhood, then the injury does not arise out of the employment. This case was followed by Donahue’s Case, 226 Mass. 595. It was there held that an injury to an employee, caused by slipping upon ice in a public street, did not arise out of his employment, although he was called upon to use the street in the performance of his work; that the risk of falling upon a slippery street or sidewalk was common to everyone travelling on a street or on a highway, and was not peculiar to the employment. That case is decisive of the law of the Commonwealth. It has not been overruled. We are bound by it, and it must be followed in decisions arising under the workman’s compensation act. That an employee cannot recover under the act for an injury resulting from a fall upon ice on a public street is settled by Donahue’s Case; see Hewitt’s Case, 225 Mass. 1. The same principle was applied in Braley’s Case, 237 Mass. 105, and in Gardner’s Case, 247 Mass. 308.

The facts disclosed in Moran’s Case, 234 Mass. 566, and Cook’s Case, 243 Mass. 572, 573, distinguish them from the case before us.

It follows that the decree must be reversed and a decree entered for the insurer.

So ordered.