Case ID: so2d_118/html/0077-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "WIGGINTON, Chief Judge. CARROLL, DONALD K., Judge", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

March PERRY, Petitioner, v. ST. JOE PAPER COMPANY, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, Bobby Russ, Gibson Paperwood Company, and Florida Industrial Commission, Respondents.
    No. B-231.
    District Court of Appeal of Florida. First District.
    Feb. 11, 1960.
    
      Truett & Watkins, Tallahassee, for petitioner.
    Keen, O’Kelley & Spitz, Julian R. Alford, Burnis T. Coleman and Paul E. Speh, Tallahassee, for respondents.
   WIGGINTON, Chief Judge.

We are petitioned to review by certiorari an order of the Florida Industrial Commission which reversed a compensation order of its deputy commissioner and remanded the cause for further proceedings. The deputy’s compensation order was reversed with respect to the conclusion of law reached by him in which he concluded that upon the facts found by him the claimant’s employer at the time of his injury was St. Joe Paper Company. The deputy’s findings of fact, all of which are supported by competent substantial evidence, were not disturbed by the Full Commission.

The Nickelson case heretofore decided by this court involved a Workmen’s Compensation claim by a pulpwood cutter under circumstances similar to the case now being reviewed. In Nickelson the deputy commissioner made extensive findings of fact with respect to the employer-employee relationship which existed between the claimant Nickelson, his pulpwood producer and St. Joe Paper Company. Based upon his findings of fact in the Nickelson case, the deputy commissioner applied the rules of law pronounced by this court in the Lindsey case, and correctly concluded that the claimant’s employer was not St. Joe Paper Company, but was his producer, H. T. Cotton. On review the Full Commission reversed the deputy’s conclusion of law and erroneously held that St. Joe Paper Company was claimant’s employer. This court granted certiorari and quashed the Full Commission’s order by reversal and reinstated the order of the deputy.

In the case now under review the deputy commissioner likewise made extensive findings of fact with respect to the employer-employee relationship which existed between the claimant Perry, his producer and St. Joe Paper Company. The record reveals that each of the deputy’s findings of fact are supported by competent substantial evidence. Contrary to his ruling in Nickel-son, the deputy here concluded as a matter of law that Perry was the employee of St. Joe Paper Company. The legal conclusion is directly contrary to the conclusion of law reached by the same deputy in Nickelson on facts which in all material respects are substantially identical, and is contrary to the law which governs the establishment of an employer-employee relationship as stated by this court in Lindsey.

On review by the Full Commission, which followed this court’s ruling in Nickelson, the Commission held that the deputy had applied an incorrect rule of law to the facts found by him in concluding that St. Joe Paper Company was claimant’s employer. The deputy’s order was reversed and the cause remanded with directions that the deputy make a determination as to the identity of the claimant’s employer in order that the award of compensation may be enforced against the person properly responsible therefor. We emphasize that the deputy commissioner’s findings of fact in this case, all of which are supported by competent substantial evidence, have not been disturbed by the Full Commission. Indeed, under the rule in the United States Casualty Co. case such would not be permitted. It is, however, not only the prerogative but the duty of the Full Commission to reverse an order of its deputy if the deputy has applied to the facts an incorrect principle of law. We, therefore, hold that the Full Commission was eminently correct in entering its order of reversal, which order will not be disturbed.

In all deference to the action of the deputy commissioner in this case it must be pointed out that his original holding in Nickelson to the effect that St. Joe Paper Company was not the claimant’s employer was thereafter reversed by the Industrial Commission, who held under the facts in that case that St. Joe Paper Company was the claimant’s employer. It was while the Full Commission’s order of reversal was in effect, and before it was quashed by this court on certiorari, that the deputy was called upon to enter his compensation order in this case. His legal conclusion that St. Joe Paper Company was not the claimant’s employer in Nickelson having been reversed by the Full Commission, the deputy bowed to the Commission’s ruling and upon substantially identical facts found in this case that St. Joe Paper Company was the claimant’s employer. It was not until after the deputy had entered the compensation order in this case that this court considered and quashed the Full Commission’s order of reversal in Nickelson and reinstated the deputy’s order. It was after our decision in Nickelson that the case now under review was considered by the Full Commission. On its review the Full Commission respected this court’s opinion in Nickelson and accordingly had no alternative but to reverse the deputy's order which had reached a legal conclusion contrary to the one originally reached by him in Nickelson.

The order of the Full Commission is affirmed and certiorari denied.

STURGIS, J., concurs.

CARROLL, DONALD K., J., dissents.

CARROLL, DONALD K., Judge

(dissenting).

I cannot agree with the majority for the reason that I am of the opinion that there is sufficient competent, substantial evidence in the record to support the deputy commissioner’s finding of fact that the respondent St. Joe Paper Company was the claimant’s employer. Under the unquestioned and long-recognized doctrine of United States Casualty Co. v. Maryland Casualty Co., Fla.1951, 55 So.2d 741, in Florida a deputy commissioner in a workmen’s compensation claim proceeding is the sole trier of the facts, and his findings of fact, if supported by competent, substantial evidence, must be affirmed by the Florida Industrial Commission and an appellate court, neither of which has any authority to substitute its findings of fact for those of the deputy commissioner or to disturb his findings of fact. This is the doctrine which we expressly invoked and applied in St. Joe Paper Company v. Nickelson, Fla.1959, 108 So.2d 626, when we upheld the deputy commissioner’s finding that the St. Joe Paper Company was not the employer of a claimant for the stated reason that there was in the record competent, substantial evidence to sustain such finding of fact. We did not, of course, hold in the Nickelson case Qr in any case that the last-named company or any other pulp mill was not as a matter of law the employer of a pulpwood cutter. This court and the Commission lack the power to re-determine the facts.

The question as to who was the employer of the claimant at the time of his injury in the present proceeding is a question of fact for the determination of the trier of the facts, the deputy commissioner. See J. Ray Arnold Lumber Corporation of Olustee v. Richardson, 1932, 105 Fla. 204, 141 So. 133, a jury case in which the Florida Supreme Court held that it was a question of fact for the jury’s determination as to who was the employer of an injured employee at the time of his injury. I see no reason why this should not be true when a deputy commissioner is the trier of facts instead of a jury.

In its order the Commission said: “We have closely examined the instant Order of the Deputy Commissioner and it appears that the Deputy’s conclusion is not supported by his findings of fact.” This apparently is the basic ground for the Commission’s vacation of the deputy’s order. It may well be true that the deputy’s conclusion as to the employer is not supported by his other findings of fact in his order, but there is no legal requirement that the findings of a deputy commissioner must be consistent with each other, and certainly none that a deputy’s finding as to the employer must be supported by other findings of fact in his order. The Commission and an appellate court, in reviewing a finding of fact by a deputy commissioner, must look to the evidence in the record — not to his other findings of fact to see if there is sufficient support for his finding of fact as to the employer.

The Commission’s order cannot, in my view, be sustained by using the test of whether the deputy has applied to the facts an incorrect principle of law, a test sometimes invoked by a reviewing body which has no fact-trying authority, as a justification for entering the province of another person or body with exclusive fact-finding powers, such as a deputy commissioner or a petit jury. In my opinion, that test, in quintessence, is nothing more than a restatement of the “competent, substantial evidence rule” recognized and applied in the Maryland Casualty case and countless other Florida cases. In other words, we cannot consistently say here that the deputy applied to the facts an incorrect principle of law, if we hold that there was sufficient competent, substantial evidence in the record from which the deputy could lawfully conclude as he did regarding the identity of the claimant’s employer.

Being of the opinion, then, that in the instant proceeding there is competent substantial evidence in the record to support the deputy commissioner’s finding as to the employer, I think we have no legal alternative to issuing the writ of certiorari, quashing the Commission’s order, and remanding the cause with instructions to reinstate and affirm the deputy commissioner’s order. 
      
      . St. Joe Paper Company v. Nickelson, Fla.App.1959, 108 So.2d 626.
     
      
      . Lindsey v. Willis, Fla.App.1958, 101 So. 2d 422.
     
      
      . United States Casualty Co. v. Maryland Casualty Co., Fla.1951, 55 So.2d 741.