Opinion ID: 326183
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Justifiable Cause

Text: 4 Claimant, the only witness before the Deputy Commissioner, stated that she and the decedent agreed to separate in 1954 because his excessive drinking was a bad influence on their two minor children. (JA 20-24, 30). 3 The Valentines maintained separate abodes from the time of the separation until Mr. Valentine's death in 1970. The Deputy Commissioner concluded that the credible evidence sustains that at the time of the employee's injury and death the claimant widow was living apart from the employee for justifiable cause. (JA 79). 5 Petitioners contend that the decedent's drinking and its adverse potential impact on his minor children do not constitute the sort of conduct which may serve as justifiable cause for the claimant's living apart from her husband. This contention rests solely on our decision in Weeks v. Behrend, 77 U.S.App.D.C. 341, 135 F.2d 258 (1943). That decision affirmed a district court holding that the Deputy Commissioner's finding of living apart for justifiable cause was not supported by substantial evidence where the couple separated by mutual consent in order to enable the husband to obtain employment from the Public Relief Bureau. Id. at 342, 135 F.2d at 259. This court opined that Congress had looked to the law of divorce and separation in fashioning the justifiable cause requirement and intended the phrase as substantially equivalent to a 'matrimonial offense.'  Id. Subsequent to Weeks the Fifth Circuit gave justifiable cause a broader and more straightforward interpretation, finding a mother-in-law's violent objection to the claimant and her cutting up of claimant's clothes sufficient as a justifiable cause for living apart. 4 We read Thompson as undermining the narrow construction of justifiable cause offered in Weeks. The Court stated in Thompson that it would not assess the marital conduct of the parties. That is an inquiry which may be relevant to legal issues arising under State domestic relations law. Our concern is with the proper interpretation of the Federal Longshoremen's Act. 347 U.S. at 336, 74 S.Ct. at 556. We conclude that the Deputy Commissioner and the Board properly found that the decedent's drinking and its effect on claimant's minor children constituted justifiable cause for their separation. 6 In their brief, petitioners claimed that even if a justifiable cause existed at the time of the separation it did not persist until the date of the employee's death, 5 the time fixed by the statute for ascertaining the existence of justifiable cause. 6 The justifiable cause requirement is met where, as here, it continued over a period (at least 11 years) sufficient to shape the claimant's way of life. Counsel for petitioners conceded as much, at least where there was no subsequent misconduct undercutting conjugal nexus. This comports with human realities and avoids working undue hardships upon individuals by forcing either the forfeiture of benefits or the abandonment of a life style to which they had become accustomed following the justified separation. In essence, we believe that at least in cases like the present one the effect of the original justification persists and inheres in the relationship of the parties despite the change in circumstances since the initial separation. 7