Norwich bulletin., 1914-10-28

| 1 @ quasi contract such as exists be- | tween the state and a public official. Undoubtedly the quasi contract has | an obligation and the obligation may be founded upon statutory, official or customary duty. Also it is true that employer and employe are correl- ative terms. It seems to me clear I that the state used the services of | Sheriff Stbley for hire and that he was an employe of the state.
 1 It is argued by the state that be- 1 cause the official title of Chapter 13S l of the Public Acts of 1913 reads: 'An Act concerning compensation to work ! men injured in the course of their em- ployment," therefore it carries with it | the idea simply of compensating per- l This claim we are unable to follow | for a variety of reasons. The title of | a statute cannot control or vary the meaning of the enacting part if the I latter is plain and unambiguous. The legislature does not use the phrase workmen anywhere in the Act except in Sec. 13 and in the title and subtitle. It does use the words em- | ploye and employer, and in section 43 it proceeds to define them. By that section the state is expressly included. It is a familiar doctrine that when the state is epressly named in g. statute | it is bound the same as the indi- 1 idual. ,-~
 who Is Workfnan.
 As already indicated among the l English speaking peoples the original source of this kind of legislation was the Act of Great Britain. The phrase l workman in the British Act is thus defined: Workman does not include any person employed otherwise than by way of manual labor whose re- muneration exceeds two hundred and fifty pounds a year. or a person whose employment is of a casual nature and who is employed otherwise than for the purposes of the employers trade or business or member Of police force or an outworker, or a member of the employers family dwelling in his house, but. save as aforesaid
 means any person who has entered into or works under a. contract of ser vice or apprenticeship with an enn- bour, clerical work. or otherwise, and whether the contract is expressed or
 implied, is oral or in writing
 ,l This being the definition given in the Act, the manner in which the , meaning of "workmman" is for the purposes of the Act to be azcertained
 must be arrived ot by a process of exhaustion. It is not correct to say
 that every person not excluded in
 terms from the Act is within it, but it is correct to say that every person not specifically excluded, whose con-
 tract is one of service with an em- , ployer, is included"
 The difference between this def1ni-
 ton and the language of paragraph 4
 of our Act is under the circumstances
 significant.
 No Distinction As to Manual Labor
 The fact that there is a distinction
 between the word workman as used in the British Act and the word em- 1 ploye usually found in the American I Statutes is commented upon by MT
 Bradbury on page 1O7 of his work on ! Workmen's Compensation. and he re-
 marks on page 10S that no distinction is made between those engaged in 1 manual and other kinds of labor. The | word "employe" is not word judi 1 cially defined in any extensive line of
 American decisions for the reason that outside of the Workmen's Compensa-
 ton Act it is seldom found except in
 connection with other words such as l operatives, laborers and the like, and
 where so used it has been held that although the word "employe" is broad
 and comprehensive, 1t must be limited
 by the more specific words "operaL- lives" and '.laborers'' connected with it.
 A very large number of cases are to
 be found in the last edition of Labatt
 Master & Servant. Vol. 5. beginning
 with paragraph 1941 and especially in paragraph 1946, in which the terms workmen, mechanics, operators and the like are discussed and defined. But, these decisions throw little, if any, light upon the question under con- sideration. All of these cases. so far as I have examined them, arise un- der statutes regarding preference from bankrupt or insolvent employ CTS, where 1t was found that the pur- pose of legislation. in passing the Act under discussion, was to give such 8 preference only to those receiving what is commonly spoken of as wages rather than that class of persons re- ceiving salaries. In the last edition of the Standard Dictionary the word is defined as "one who works for wages or salary"
 | Language Is Plain.
 The line of cases also to be found in which great attention is paid to the title of an Act can have but little, if any force in this state. Of course we have no constitutional provision about the titles of statutes in connection with their interpretation as is the case in many of our sister states. Whatever may be thought about the policy of the legislature or its purpose in pass ing the Act in question. it seems to
 me that to hold that Sheriff Stbley was not an employe of the state, and that his widow would not come within the provisions of the Act would be