Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/93633/ward-gow-vs-krinsky
Timestamp: 2017-05-26 23:43:52
Document Index: 541728099

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 90', '§ 95', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 2']

Ward and Gow Vs Krinsky - Citation 93633 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
Save as PDF Add a Tag Add a Note Semantics Visualize Ward and Gow Vs. Krinsky - Court Judgment	LegalCrystal Citationlegalcrystal.com/93633CourtUS Supreme CourtDecided OnJun-05-1922Case Number259 U.S. 503AppellantWard and GowRespondentKrinskyExcerpt:
ward & gow v. krinsky - 259 u.s. 503 (1922)
1. the rights of employers under the fourteenth amendment are not violated by an extension of the new york compensation act (
) to all employments in which four or more workmen or operatives (farm laborers and domestic servants excepted) are regularly employed, construed by the state court as including, also, all other employees of the same employer and..... Judgment:
) to all employments in which four or more workmen or operatives (farm laborers and domestic servants excepted) are regularly employed, construed by the state court as including, also, all other employees of the same employer and employed in the same business with such workmen and operatives, though at places remote from their work. Pp.
259 U. S. 513
259 U. S. 516
of an employer in the business of disposing of advertising space on the cars and station platforms of subway and elevated railway lines in a city, and of selling newspapers, etc., at booths located on the platforms; with numerous employees, including executives, clerks, inspectors, chauffeurs and porters, and many salesmen working in the booths separately and apart from other employees, and where the injury in question was inflicted upon such a salesman by a subway train while he was engaged in emptying from the platform upon the tracks a pail of water, used in connection with his work in his booth. P.
259 U. S. 507
The New York Workmen's Compensation Law of 1913-1914 [Laws 1913, c. 816; Laws 1914, cc. 41 and 316] sustained as constitutional against attacks based on the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment in
, after several amendments, was further amended by c. 634 of the Laws of 1918, which added to the list of hazardous employments in § 2 a new subdivision or group, as group 45 -- the second to be so designated -- reading as follows:
An award of compensation made by the Commission was affirmed by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court (
Krinsky v. Ward,
193 App.Div. 557), and its judgment was affirmed without opinion by the Court of Appeals. The record was remitted to the Appellate Division, which made the order and judgment of the Court of Appeals its own, and to it, as custodian of the record, the present writ of error was directed.
such, and clearly were "engaged in the same business" with the salesmen, for they loaded the trucks which carried the merchandise from the central depot to the booths. The Appellate Division held that the salesmen, although not "workmen or operatives," nevertheless were within the protection of the statute. Reference was made to the definition of "employee" in subdivision 4 of § 3, amended by Laws 1916, c. 622, and Laws 1917, c. 705, so as to include any one in the service of an employer whose principal business is that of conducting a hazardous employment, construed in previous decisions as bringing within the protection of the statute all employees accidentally injured in the performance of duties incidental to the prosecution of a business defined as hazardous, even though such duties were not a part of the characteristic process or operation forming the basis of the group (
Matter of Dose v. Moehle Lithographic Co.,
221 N.Y. 401, 405;
Spang v. Broadway Brewing & Malting Co.,
182 App.Div. 443;
Joyce v. Eastman Kodak Co.,
182 App.Div. 354), and it was held that, since this rule applied to all the other groups defined in § 2, it must be applied in respect to second group 45. That the view of the Court of Appeals was substantially the same appears not only from its affirming the judgment of the Appellate Division without questioning its reasoning, but from the opinion delivered by the Court of Appeals itself in a case decided at the same time with this.
Matter of Europe v. Addison Amusements,
231 N.Y. 105. Europe was conductor of a famous band of musicians who, after a military service with the American Forces in France, went upon a concert tour throughout the United States, under employment by Addison Amusements, Inc. With the band of 65 pieces, there were four or more workmen or operatives employed to accompany it, arrange platforms, chairs, and scenery, handle baggage, etc. Europe himself, although an employee, was not among those described as "workmen
the event of the injury or death of one of those employed, instead of permitting the entire risk to be assumed by the individuals immediately affected. In general, as in the New York law, provisions for compulsory compensation are made to apply only to those employed in hazardous occupations, where it may be contemplated by both parties in advance that sooner or later some of those employed probably will sustain accidental injury in the course of the employment, but where nobody can know in advance which particular employees or how many will be the victims, or how serious will be the injuries.
243 U. S. 202
et seq.; Mountain Timber Co. v. Washington,
It will be seen that while, by the terms of the statute, the employment of "four or more workmen or operatives regularly, in the same business or in or about the same establishment," etc., apparently is indicated as the basis of the new group -- one rather frequently adopted in laws of this character,
235 U. S. 574
et seq.; Middleton v. Texas Power & Light Co.,
-- in effect, by the construction adopted by the state court and binding upon us, the employees
The contention that, by this construction, second group 45 has been extended beyond the limit allowable consistently with due process of law, and "has been applied in this case to an employment with no inherent hazard whatever," rests upon an assumption of fact disproved by Krinsky's experience. Were it not so, the argument is self-destructive. The statute requires the employer to make or secure compensation for the disability or death of an employee only where it results from accidental personal injury arising out of and in the course of the employment. Where the employment is entirely free from inherent hazard to the employee, the statute imposes no responsibility upon the employer, and hence cannot substantially interfere with his liberty or property, with or without "due process of law."
easy: to the self-insurer, no liability accrues except as disabling injuries actually occur; the giving of security, a reasonable regulation in aid of the general scheme (
-209) does not increase the obligation. To the employer, who insures, presumably the premiums will not exceed a reasonable estimate of the risk; to him who insures in the state fund, there is an assurance of equivalency in the public administration of the fund under § 90
of the law, especially the duty imposed upon the state board by § 95 to keep separate accounts as to each group, so as to determine equitable rates, to rearrange the groups by withdrawing any employment embraced in one group and transferring it wholly or in part to another, to set up new groups at discretion, to determine the hazards of the different classes composing each group, and to fix the premiums therefor, based upon the total payroll and number of employees in each class of employment at the lowest possible rate consistent with the maintenance of a solvent insurance fund and the creation of a reasonable surplus and reserve. A similar system was sustained in
243 U. S. 241
That it does not deny to plaintiff in error "the equal protection of the laws" is equally clear. The argument that it does proceeds upon the untenable theory that, if hazard be imputed to the employment of "four or more workmen or operatives regularly, in the same business or in or about the same establishment," its effect in the scheme of compensation must be confined to the hazards attributable to group labor. In
235 U. S. 575
, a somewhat similar classification was sustained, but not upon any limited
ground. In the framing of so far-reaching a scheme of legislation, dealing with occupations so diverse, necessarily a wide range must be accorded to legislative discretion about defining the groups to which it shall apply. Lines must be drawn, and it is not to be assumed that they have been drawn without good reason. The difference between the larger and the smaller establishments may be recognized as a basis of classification in legislation affecting the defenses of contributory negligence and assumption of risk, as was held in
Jeffrey Mfg. Co. v. Blagg, supra.
So, the minimum number in a single employ may be regarded, we think, in arranging a system designed to distribute the burden of industrial accident losses with a view to the ability of the industry to bear it. Nor need a law framed on the lines of that under consideration confine the compensation narrowly to typical cases, where it is confined, as here, to cases actually arising in the course of gainful employment, and due to inherent hazards of the occupation. Second group 45 applies impartially to all employers who come within the descriptive terms; the employment of "four or more workmen or operatives regularly" is treated as the nucleus of a business probably involving personal hazard to some of those employed, and the same rule of construction is applied to this as to other groups.
But, it is insisted, neither
furnishes an adequate reply to a constitutional objection. This Court sustained the New York Workmen's Compensation Law, and the kindred statutes of Washington and Arizona, fundamentally upon the ground of the hazardous nature of the occupations covered. If that ground is defensible at all -- so runs the argument -- the system must be confined to occupations actually hazardous in their nature; a legislative definition is not sufficient, nor is the occurrence of a single accident, much less one so singular and so little related to his general duty as that
which befell Krinsky, adequate proof of occupational hazard. It might occur to anybody, any day, on his way downtown to business, were he not especially careful. This is too fantastic a definition of "inherent risk" to form the basis of a law which must conform to standards of reasonableness. And again, how can the classification resorted to in second group 45 be sustained as reasonable, within the requirements either of the "due process of law" or the "equal protection of the laws" provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment? The occupation of a salesman stationed alone far uptown in the Bronx does not become hazardous simply because four or more porters art regularly employed at headquarters downtown in Manhattan. How can we accept the reason suggested by the Court of Appeals in the
(somewhat at random, it should be said, and when the court, by its own confession, was not required to test its adequacy), that a business not ordinarily hazardous becomes such at times when manual work is done or machinery operated in connection with its main purpose? This would be an assumption contrary to common experience, especially as applied to manual work downtown in Manhattan and the occupation of a single salesman -- it might as well have been 500 clerks uptown in the Bronx. What reason is there for imposing compulsory liability upon the employer of salesmen or clerks in the Bronx simply because he finds it convenient to employ at the same time, but in separate duties, four workmen or operatives in Manhattan? He might dismiss the workmen -- his neighbor and business competitor might dispense with such workmen -- and thus gain immunity from the statute. Classification is permissible in legislation only when based on reasonable grounds. This peculiar grouping is classification gone wild. It cannot be sustained by the simple and obvious tests applied in
Jeffrey Mfg. Co. v. Blagg, supra,
and kindred cases.
Many of the propositions may be admitted -- for the purpose of the argument only -- as correct according to
standards and unanswerable without resort to the tests of experience. We shall endeavor with some care to answer from the latter standpoint, not contenting ourselves with some rather too obvious replies already suggested.
The New York Workmen's Compensation Law, by its terms, is based upon the existence of actual, not hypothetical, inherent hazards confronting employees in gainful occupations; was sustained as valid by this Court upon that ground in
New York Central R. Co. v. White, supra;
has been administered by the state constantly on that basis, and second group 45 shows no clear evidence of a purpose to depart from it. We leave wholly aside, as not here involved, the question whether the new group could be sustained on any other basis. Any question about the validity of an act purporting to impose compulsory liability upon employers for losses due to occupational hazards, where there really are no occupational hazards, may safely be left until such a case is presented.
Next, we agree that, in a test of constitutionality under the Fourteenth Amendment, the question whether there is inherent hazard in an occupation or a group of occupations is not to be settled conclusively by a legislative declaration or by an empty form of words. We add, it is not to be settled -- hardly is affected -- by an arbitrary
statement, unaided by the light of experience in
Again, we agree that (if it were necessary, as we hold it is not, that group lines should explain themselves) the suggestion quoted from the opinion of the Court of Appeals in the
case hardly offers a satisfactory explanation of the new group, reasonably definite and substantial in its basis, within the tests of the Fourteenth Amendment. But this Court, while bound by the construction of the statute adopted by the state court of last resort -- that being a question of state law -- is not concluded by its reasoning, but must exercise an independent judgment, when called upon to determine the federal question whether the act, as construed and applied, is repugnant to the restrictions of the amendment. Any suggestion from the state court in aid of the act fairly may be accepted, but a suggestion having an adverse effect, while entitled to respectful consideration, is not to be taken as weakening the action taken by the state through its legislative branch, or as furnishing an exclusive statement of the grounds upon which the legislature acted. It
is proper to say that, in the
case, no question of the constitutionality of the new group 45 appears to have been presented, and the court alluded to the phraseology merely to dispose of the question of construction.
In examining the Compensation Law and its many amendments, including the one in question, and the workings of the law as indicated by the decisions cited and others, we have been impressed again and again, to the point of complete conviction, that this act or any of its amendments is not the work of novices or bunglers.
reasoning has not been resorted to; there is no reliance upon generalizations or "common knowledge;" no "simply because;" nothing taken for granted. No case that we recall illustrates more aptly or forcibly the wisdom of the familiar rule, expressed by this Court in a recent case in these terms:
. The law was passed in 1913, and reenacted in 1914 after the taking effect of a constitutional amendment adopted under circumstances mentioned in the
243 U. S. 195
; the decision of this Court was announced in March, 1917; meanwhile, administration commenced July 1, 1914, and was continued for four years prior to the enactment of second group 45; a multitude of compensation rulings, opinions of the Attorney General, and court decisions, sufficiently reported to the public, together with the administration of the state insurance fund, and a study and adoption of the plan of classifications used by private casualty insurance companies for underwriting business, may give but an inadequate impression of the informed, expert opinion upon which the legislature might, and we fairly may presume did, draw for aid in framing the new group.
Let us assume that, after four years' practical experience in the operation of the Compensation Law, aided by the intensive studies of the Commission, the legislature was satisfied with the law as well suited to the needs of the people except that it did not go far enough, and left uncovered much unclassified ground where undefined and virtually undefinable industrial hazards remained. It was desired to leave out, as before, farm laborers and domestic servants -- a classification sustained upon simple grounds, doubtless far from expressing in full the reasons that had actuated the legislature, in
as nearly as experience may guide, not
but only where there is actual inherent hazard, and to the extent that it extends.
sure to be "casualties" might baffle the efforts even of the experienced legislators who framed second group 45. Accidents cannot be relied upon to follow the symmetrical lines of group description; this is a difficulty that showed itself under the groups as they stood before, and led to the 1916 amendment of the definition of "employee." Even clerks and salesmen cannot, in this busy day, be confidently treated as immune from industrial hazards; if a general rule must be declared, it would be safer to say, on the basis of experience, that no occupation is free from industrial hazard than to say that any specified occupation is free. Even the probable oversights or want of vision of the employer are an appreciable source of danger to clerks, as witness
182 App.Div. 354, where a clerk employed by a maker of photographic cameras and supplies (classed as hazardous in group 23), but engaged in clerical duties having no direct connection with the manufacture, was injured because of a defect of the chair in which she was sitting at work. A like suggestion arises in the case before us, where the employer insured the chauffeurs, who drove the trucks with merchandise to the various stations, but failed to insure the salesmen, overlooking the fact that they also occasionally were subjected to peril in the line of duty. It may be objected that these cases are not typical; but the legislature may have realized, as an element of the problem with which they were dealing, what indeed is proverbial -- that accidents do not conform to types; that they are one thing that happen "simply because" they are accidents. The particular cases are not imaginary; they actually occurred, and were brought to the test of the Compensation Law. The legislature may have had the best of reasons for believing that others as strange were happening rather frequently in the great, busy, bustling population of the Empire State; that, while an individual clerk's or salesman's life and limb perhaps were less in danger than an individual
Europe v. Addison Amusements, Inc.,
231 N.Y. 105, the Court of Appeals construed these provisions and some quotations from the opinion will show their far-reaching effect.
"By the amendment of subdivision 4, § 3 (Laws 1916, c. 622, § 2), an employee to be entitled to compensation is no longer required to be himself engaged at the time of accident in hazardous work. It is sufficient that he is an employee in such hazardous business.
Matter of Does v. Moehle Lithographic Co.,
221 N.Y. 401."
"Group 45, as above quoted, was added by the Laws of 1918, c. 634, § 2. The legislature classified as hazardous employments all those occupations in which there were regularly engaged four or more workmen or operatives. It covered employments not specified in the other subdivisions. No doubt it was considered a risk to be in an employment where four or more manual laborers or operatives were engaged. It is not necessary for us finally to define or limit the words 'workmen' or 'operatives' as used in this subdivision. Generally speaking, a workman is a man employed in manual labor, whether skilled or unskilled, an artificer, mechanic or artisan, and an operative is a factory hand, one who operates machinery. Webster's New International Dictionary. There is a marked distinction between a workman and an employee. Although, in a general sense, all workmen and operatives are employees, yet all employees are not workmen or operatives within the meaning of this law. The words 'workmen' and 'operatives' are used in their narrower meaning.
Bowne v. S.W. Bowne Co.,
221 N.Y. 28."
"Why the legislature should have extended by the second group of subdivision 45 the hazardous employments to any employment having four workmen or operatives is not for us to say. The courts, in construing statutes, are not concerned with the wisdom of the legislation.
Wilson v. C. Dorflinger & Sons,
218 N.Y. 84, 86."
, are not pertinent. The classifications there approved rested upon the obvious truth