Case Title: State v. Swope

Citation: 251 P.2d 266, 56 N.M. 782

Docket Number: 

State: new-mexico

Court: New Mexico Supreme Court

Date: 1952-12-16T00:00:00Z

Document:
251 P.2d 266 (1952) 56 N.M. 782 STATE ex rel. HADDOCK ENGINEERS, Limited, et al. v. SWOPE. No. 5567. Supreme Court of New Mexico. December 16, 1952. *267 Simms, Modrall, Seymour & Simms and Joseph E. Roehl, Albuquerque, Gilbert, White & Gilbert, Santa Fe, for petitioner. Joseph L. Smith, Lorenzo A. Chavez and Dale B. Walker, Albuquerque, for respondent. SADLER, Justice. The relator seeks by prohibition to restrain Edwin L. Swope as a Judge of the 2nd Judicial District from proceeding further in a common-law action for negligence pending before him wherein one Cecil Shelton is plaintiff and relator is defendant in which the former seeks to recover damages from defendant by reason of injuries said to have been suffered by him while employed by the latter as a carpenter upon a classified government public work in the Territory of Alaska known as the Takotna Project. Upon the filing and reading of relator's petition herein we authorized the issuance of an alternative writ and the matter is now before us for final hearing. The material facts will next be stated. On or about September 21, 1951, the plaintiff (meaning always the plaintiff below), a carpenter by trade, and a resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, left that city for employment in Alaska. Shortly after arrival in Seattle, Washington, and on September 25, 1951, he entered into an employment contract with the petitioner for work in Alaska and was placed upon its payroll. While enroute to the job site there, he was paid his regular wages. The job site was located some 750 miles from Anchorage, to which point he proceeded immediately after signing the contract, thence to McGrath, Alaska, where he was to be located and perform work under his contract on a government housing or barracks project near an army base. The petitioner had a contract to construct certain improvements on this army base. When plaintiff first arrived at McGrath, the site of his job, he was housed in a tent. There were between 300 and 400 men engaged in the construction work but not rooms for all of them in the mess hall barracks which accounts for the fact that some of them were housed in tents upon arrival, moving into rooms in the mess hall barracks as soon as rooms were made available. Under the employment contract the men were charged $5.75 per day for room and board which was provided by the contractor, the petitioner herein. The place where the work was largely carried on was on a portion of the site at Takotna 20 to 25 miles from McGrath, though unquestionably plaintiff did some of his work in and around the mess hall barracks, testifying that he carried material the day before through and over the very portion of the utilidor where he fell in the hole next day. The men were transported daily in trucks of the petitioner from McGrath to Takotna up a mountain and apparently over very rough roads, the trip requiring from one to two hours. The men lived and ate on the base, there being no other place available where food and lodging could be had. It was on the evening of October 15, 1951, that plaintiff suffered the injuries complained of in the action he filed below. The tent which he occupied up to this time was located about 150 yards from the mess hall. Returning from the day's work on the date mentioned, the plaintiff ate his evening meal about 6:30 p.m., finishing same about 7:15 p.m. He then visited *268 with some friends in another part of the mess hall barracks for about an hour. After this visit he started for his tent located about 150 yards northeast of the mess hall barracks. He was going there to get his clothing and take it to the room of his foreman in the mess hall barracks, the latter having agreed to share his room with the plaintiff. The most available route to this tent from the place where he had been visiting with friends was through an enclosed and unlighted walkway or utilidor which would bring him to a point of exit nearest the tent occupied by him. The walkway protected the workmen from the elements while inside it and was generally used by them going from one portion of the barracks to another. While passing through the walkway the plaintiff fell into an open and unlighted hole from 3 to 4 feet wide and 8 to 10 feet deep, left uncovered and unlighted by plumbers who had been engaged in work on the pipes below, placed there for use in heating the barracks and the walkway as a part thereof. He alleges in his complaint serious injuries as a result of the fall. Time of his fall into the hole was about 8:00 p.m. on October 15, 1951. Following the accident the plaintiff was hospitalized in Alaska for about a month when he returned to Albuquerque at his own expense. At the time of the accident, the relator had in force workmen's compensation insurance under the authority of the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, 33 U.S.C.A. § 901 et seq. (hereinafter referred to as Longshoremen's Compensation Act) as amended, passed by Congress for the benefit of the plaintiff and all other workmen on the job. The relator's insurance carrier offered to pay compensation in accordance with the governing provisions of the federal act but the tender of the first check for $70 representing two weeks' compensation was refused and returned. In the complaint filed below the plaintiff seeks damages in a substantial amount from defendant in a common-law action for damages. The defendant interposed a motion to dismiss, reading as follows: "For grounds hereof, defendant states: The respondent as one of the judges of the district court of Bernalillo County in which plaintiff's complaint was filed heard argument on the motion and having announced his intention to overrule the motion, *269 the defendant below as petitioner in this court sought prohibition. We authorized issuance of an alternative writ as already mentioned. The question before us, then, is whether under the facts recited the district court of Bernalillo County had jurisdiction to proceed with the trial of plaintiff's common-law action for damages. If it did the alternative writ already issued should be discharged. If it did not, it should be made permanent. On the eve of World War II by congressional action the protection and benefits of the Longshoremen's Compensation Act were extended to workers engaged on governmental public works without the territorial limits of the United States. In its amended form, so far as material to the determination of this proceeding, the Act reads as follows: The Longshoremen's Compensation Act referred to in the text of subsections (a) and (d) is classified as Chapter 18 of Title 33, and may be further identified as 33 U.S.C.A. § 901 et seq., section 902 whereof provides: Section 903 of said Compensation Act discloses the coverage of the Act and section 904 defines the employer's liability for compensation. Section 905 in clear and concise language states that the liability of the employer "shall be exclusive and in place of all other liability of such employer to the employee," and, further: We are satisfied from a review of decided cases that under the facts here present the respondent's court was without jurisdiction to entertain the plaintiff's action for damages. Cases both federal and state dealing with this very act have so held. Nogueira v. New York, N.H. & H.R. Co., 281 U.S. 128, 50 S. Ct. 303, 74 L. Ed. 754; Royal Indemnity Co. v. Puerto Rico Cement Corp., 1 Cir., 142 F.2d 237; Cataldo v. A./S. Glittre, D.C., 41 F. Supp. 555; Moore v. Christiensen S.C. Co., 5 Cir., 53 F.2d 299; De Martino v. Bethlehem Steel Co., 1 Cir., 164 F.2d 177; Fontana v. Pennsylvania R. Co., D.C., 106 F. Supp. 461. See, also, Huhn v. Foley Bros., 221 Minn. 279, 22 N.W.2d 3. Other cases lending support to the conclusion we reach, though not dealing directly with the Longshoremen's Compensation Act are Johansen v. United States, 343 U.S. 427, 72 S. Ct. 849, 96 L.Ed. ___; Taylor v. Hubbell, 9 Cir., 188 F.2d 106; Shultz v. Lion Oil Co., D.C., 106 F. Supp. 119; Peterson v. Moran, 111 Cal. App. 2d 766, 245 P.2d 540; Latimer v. Western Machine Exchange, 40 Wash. 2d 155, 241 P.2d 923. In Royal Indemnity Co. v. Puerto Rico Cement Corp., the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit said [142 F.2d 238]: The case of Huhn v. Foley Bros., supra, presents facts very similar to those in the case at bar. Ignoring the Longshoremen's Compensation Act, the plaintiff sued his employers on the contract in a Minnesota state court to recover $138.06, the cost of a trip from Alaska to Minnesota for medical treatment, to which an appropriate commission under the Longshoremen's Act had found him entitled. The employers invoked prohibition in the Supreme Court of Minnesota. It said [221 Minn. 279, 22 N.W.2d 8]: The case of Peterson v. Moran, supra, presents another case in which an effort to recover damages in a tort action where the state's workmen's compensation act provided a remedy was stopped by prohibition. We have held in this state that where a case falls within the purview of our workmen's compensation act, the remedy provided by it is exclusive. Guthrie v. Threlkeld Co., 52 N.M. 93, 192 P.2d 307. And we have held under facts very similar to those we have before us here, in a so-called "bunkhouse" case, that the injuries arose out of and in the course of the employment. Allen v. D.D. Skousen Const. Co., 55 N.M. 1, 225 P.2d 452. Numerous federal decisions furnish precedents showing the facts of this case present a case of injuries arising out of and in the course of plaintiff's employment. See O'Leary v. Brown-Pacific-Maxon, Inc., 340 U.S. 504, 71 S. Ct. 470, 95 L. Ed. 483; McWilliams Dredging Co. v. Henderson, D.C., 36 F. Supp. 361; Scott v. Hoage, 63 App.D.C. 391, 73 F.2d 114; Travelers Ins. Co. v. Cardillo, 78 U.S.App.D.C. 255, 140 F.2d 10. Counsel for the plaintiff seem to appreciate the peculiar situation prevailing in this case, as an excerpt from his brief presently to follow discloses. We have the plaintiff, contrary to the position usually taken by an injured workman vigorously insisting that his injuries did not arise out of and in the course of his employment, an essential to recovery of compensation provided under authority of the Longshoremen's Compensation Act. On the other hand, and with equal vigor, we find the employer, contrary to the position ordinarily taken by employers save where liability is uncontested, contending that the workman's injuries did arise out of and in the course of employment, a fact that would render employer and its insurance carrier liable to appropriate award of compensation. True enough, the insurance carrier has filed with the Deputy Commissioner, a federal official, a denial of liability under Longshoremen's Compensation Act. Nevertheless, as disclosed by exhibits in the record before us, this did not occur until plaintiff had refused to accept insurer's check covering two weeks' compensation and had filed his complaint seeking damages in a common-law action of negligence for damages, amounting to an assertion that his injuries did not arise out of and in the course of his employment. The somewhat delicate situation thus presented by diametrically opposed contentions of the parties, as already stated, is appreciated by counsel for plaintiff who sums it up thus in one of the briefs filed in respondent's (plaintiff's) behalf, to-wit: It is urged upon us by counsel for respondent that notwithstanding the seemingly exclusive character of the remedy afforded by the Longshoremen's Compensation Act to workmen coming within its purview, nevertheless, that the Defense Bases Act, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1651 et seq., in extending coverage of the former act to United States territorial possessions lifted the strictness of the exclusive character of the remedy carried by the Longshoremen's Compensation Act by limiting the exclusion to actions under state compensation acts, thus rendering available to claimants actions at common law for injuries otherwise barred under the Longshoremen's Compensation Act. We think the authorities, many of which are cited, supra, show no such intent on the part of the congress. Indeed, one of the cases cited and quoted from at length by counsel for the respondent (plaintiff), Huhn v. Foley Bros., supra, holds against this contention as shown by the following quotation from that opinion, to-wit: Notwithstanding the somewhat unusual position here taken as pointed out above, the injured workman should not be made to suffer by reason thereof. It may be that he has suffered serious and permanent injury by the fall alleged. If so, he should receive compensation allowable under the Act in question commensurate with his disability. But an award of damages in a common-law action for negligence is not the place to claim the compensation to which he is entitled. The district court of Bernalillo County lacks jurisdiction of the subject matter and should not proceed further. State ex rel. Prince v. Coors, 52 N.M. 189, 194 P.2d 678. The federal jurisdiction is paramount and exclusive. Huhn v. Foley Bros., supra. It follows from what has been said that the alternative writ heretofore issued will be made permanent. Huhn v. Foley Bros., supra. It is so ordered. LUJAN, C.J., and McGHEE, COMPTON, and COORS, JJ., concur.