Case ID: ad_178/html/0236-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Kellogg, P. J.:", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Before State Industrial Commission. In the Matter of the Claim of Charles White for Compensation under the Workmen’s Compensation Law, v. James Loades, Employer, and Employers’ Liability Assurance Corporation, Ltd., Insurance Carrier.
    Third Department,
    May 2, 1917.
    Workmen’s Compensation Law—hazardous employment—employee injured while placing threshing machine in barn —farm laborers.
    A man who is traveling through the country with a threshing machine and stopping from place to place to thresh for farmers for compensation, is not engaged in farming and his employees are not farm laborers.
    A day laborer employed in. working and moving such a machine injured while putting the machine in a barn, by the wheels striking an obstruction, throwing the wagon tongue against him, was engaged in the operation of a vehicle, a hazardous employment, within the meaning of the Workmen’s Compensation Law.
    Certification by the State Industrial Commission to the Appellate Division, Third Department, of the following question: “ Was the said Charles White, the claimant herein, engaged in a hazardous employment within the' meaning of the Workmen’s Compensation Law at the time he received the personal injuries for which the award was made ? ”
    
      Bertrand L. Pettigrew [Walter L. Glenney with him on the brief], for the employer and insurance carrier.
    
      Robert W. Bonynge, for the Industrial Commission.
   Kellogg, P. J.:

The employer was carrying on the business of operating a steam machine for the threshing of grain and beans. The machine was moved from place to place for custom work. The claimant was a day laborer employed in working and moving said machine. When moving it from one place to another, while putting the separator in the barn, a wheel struck some obstruction, throwing the wagon tongue around, striking the claimant on his right knee, causing his injury. We think the case comes within group 41 of section 2 of the Workmen’s Compensation Law (Consol. Laws, chap. 67; Laws of 1914, chap. 41), the operation of a vehicle. (Matter of Costello v. Taylor, 217 N. Y. 179.)

By subdivision 4 of section 3 of the Workmen’s Compensation Law, farm laborers and domestics are not within the protection of the act; but a man who is traveling through the country with a machine, and stopping from place to place to thresh out the grain and beans of the farmers for a compensation, is not engaged in farming, and his employees are not farm laborers. He was running a threshing machine, and while that was not declared a hazardous business, the fact that the machine went from place to place like a wagon or vehicle, and upon wheels, brought it within the group stated, and the injury that came to the claimant arose from the operation of a wagon or vehicle — that is while putting it in the barn.

We answer the question in the affirmative — that the claimant was engaged in a hazardous employment at the time he received his injury.

All concurred.

Question certified answered in the affirmative.