Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/262/499/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 16:07:29+00:00

Document:
Madera Sugar Pine Company v.
1. A state workmen's compensation act otherwise valid, does not, by requiring that compensation for the accidental death of an employee, irrespective of negligence, be paid to his nonresident alien dependents deprive the employer of property without due process, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. P. 262 U. S. 501.
2. The constitutionality of acts of this kind does not depend upon the compensation's being limited to citizens or residents of the state. Id.
Error to judgments of the Supreme Court of California denying writs to review two awards made by the state Industrial Accident Commission.
in lieu of any other liability whatsoever to any person, and "without regard to negligence," for any injury sustained by his employees, including aliens, arising out of and in the course of the employment not caused by their intoxication or intentionally self-inflicted, such compensation being recoverable by the employees according to a prescribed scale gauged by their previous wages and the extent of their disability, or, if the injuries cause death, by those dependent upon them for support, according to prescribed death benefits gauged by the previous wages and the extent of the dependency of the beneficiaries. Laws Cal. 1917, c. 586; Amendment, Laws 1919, c. 471. See Western Indemnity Co. v. Pillsbury, 170 Cal. 686, 695, and North Alaska Salmon Co. v. Pillsbury, 174 Cal. 1. Nonresident alien dependents are included within its provisions as to death benefits. See Western Supply Co. v. Pillsbury, 172 Cal. 407, 416.
Petitions for writs to review these awards in accordance with the state practice were denied by the Supreme Court of California, and thereupon, on the application of the Company, these writs of error, with supersedeas, were allowed by the chief justice of that court. See Napa Valley Co. v. Railroad Commission, 251 U. S. 366, 251 U. S. 372.
operates to deprive it of property without due process and in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The argument is in substance that, while an employer may lawfully be compelled to make compensation to the resident dependents of employees whose death was caused by no legal wrong, on the ground that the state is interested in preventing such dependents from becoming public charges, this justification does not extend to the case of foreign dependents, who would not become public charges of the state, and therefore that an act requiring compensation to be made to such foreign dependents in the absence of legal wrong is not a reasonable exercise of the police power of the state. This argument, however, erroneously assumes that, in a compensation act of this character, the provision for death benefits is to be separately determined, independently of the general scope of the act and solely with reference to the relation of the beneficiaries to the employers and to the state.
Provision is universally made in workmen's compensation acts for compensation not only to disabled employees, but to the dependents of those whose injuries are fatal. And the two kinds of payment are "always regarded as component parts of a single system of rights and liabilities arising out of" the relation of employer and employee. Western Metal Supply Co. v. Pillsbury, 172 Cal. 407, 414. The object of such acts "is single -- to provide for the liability of the employer to make compensation for injuries received by an employee," whether to the employee himself or to those who suffer pecuniary loss by reason of his death. Huyett v. Pennsylvania Railroad, 86 N.J.Law, 683, 684.
who have suffered direct loss through the destruction of his earning power. And it is clear that the underlying reason of these decisions applies alike to all dependents who by his death have been deprived of their support, whether they be residents or nonresidents of the state.
If an employment be such as to fall within the state's lawmaking jurisdiction and the legislature determines that the employment of labor therein entails upon the employer certain responsibilities toward the persons performing the labor and those dependent on them, there is no constitutional provision requiring that the benefits of such legislative scheme be limited to citizens or residents of the state. Western Metal Supply Co. v. Pillsbury, supra, 172 Cal. 416. Just as accident insurance goes to the beneficiary regardless of his residence, so the quasi-insurance of a workmen's compensation act goes to those to whom the employee would naturally have made such insurance payable: to himself, although an alien, if he be disabled, and to those dependent upon his earnings for support, if he be killed. Derinza's Case, 229 Mass. 435, 441.
consider the injury received by them or the influence of that relation upon the life destroyed."
McGovern v. Philadelphia Railroad, 235 U. S. 389, 235 U. S. 400. Such employers' liability statutes are designed to benefit all employees. Vetaloro v. Perkins, 101 F. 393, 397. They have the interest of the employees in mind, and are primarily for the protection of their lives; the action is given to the beneficiaries on their account, and they are not intended to be less protected if their beneficiaries happen to live abroad. Mulhall v. Fallon, 176 Mass. 266, 269.
"Many of these toilers in mines, on public works, railroads and the numberless fields of manual labor receive a moderate wage, and are compelled to leave in foreign lands those who are dependent upon them and for whose support they patiently work on, indulging the hope that ultimately they may bring to these shores a mother, or wife and children. . . . The statute not only benefits the survivors, but protects the laboring man. . . . The laborer, leaving wife and children behind him and coming here from abroad, has a right to enter into the contract of employment, fully relying upon the statute."
Alfson v. Bush Co., 182 N.Y. 393, 399; Kaneko v. Atchison Railway, 164 F. 263, 266.
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the Workmen's Compensation Act of California, as it has been construed and applied in these cases, in providing for death benefits to the nonresident alien dependents of employees meeting death as the result of industrial accidents, is not in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment.

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