Opinion ID: 1956604
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: 1b The Justifiability of the Award with the Presumption in Play.

Text: The City maintains that even with the presumption applicable for claimant's benefit, the Commissioner erred in making an award of compensation because, says the City, the totality of the evidence established as a matter of law that an award of compensation must be denied. We disagree. We interpret the Commissioner as following the approach to rebuttable presumptions set forth in Hinds v. John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, 155 Me. 349, 155 A.2d 721 (1959) and as concluding on that approach that the evidence left it a question of fact for his determination whether the presumption had been rebutted and thereby made to disappear from the case. The Commissioner then decided this question of factfinding that the presumption was not rebutted, therefore continued in force in the case and that its persistence in the case . . . compel[led] a favorable decision to the petitioner on the issue of whether the accidental death arose out of and in the course of his employment. The City of Portland maintains that this decision of the Commissioner must be overturned on appeal because, argues the City, the evidence was sufficient to establish as a matter of law that the presumption had been rebutted and made to vanish from the case. [6] We decide that the Commissioner was correct in holding that the evidence left it a question of fact whether the presumption had been rebutted. This being so, the Commissioner's determination of that factual issue is binding on appeal. The statutory presumption is operative, here, to serve a relatively unique function. Because it bears on arising out of and in the course of his employment, it concerns not the existence of a single readily perceptible fact but rather relates to an ultimate, and somewhat complex, legal conclusion which, generally, is reached by evaluating the combined effect of an aggregate of subsidiary facts. For this reason, in the present context any single fact which the employer's presentation of countervailing evidence may indicate will tend to have much less impact than it would were we concerned with the effect of a presumption concerning the existence, or non-existence, of a particular fact more readily capable of being proved by direct perceptions. Keeping this significant point in mind, we agree with the Commissioner that the evidence presented by the City of Portland failed to rebut the presumption, in the manner in which it here functioned, as a matter of law that is, to achieve the force of preventing rational and unprejudiced minds from entertaining reasonable differences of view concerning whether it was as probable as not that the employee was outside the course of his employment when the automobile collision causing his death occurred. See Hinds v. John Hancock, supra at 366, 155 A.2d 721. [7] The evidence showed conclusively that the automobile collision occurred just over the City of Portland line, within the City of Westbrook. The evidence also showed that the employee was operating his own personal vehicle. Yet, even if it be assumed that these facts would require a rational mind to find it as probable as not that the accident occurred off the premises of the employer City of Portland, [8] such fact alone would not establish as a matter of law i. e., so cogently as to foreclose rational difference of viewthat a police officer in uniform (as the evidence also shows) was as probably as not acting outside the course of his employment, especially when the injury at issue is received at a place practically at the boundary of the employment premises. The further question, then, is whether the City of Portland produced further evidence rendering irrational any view other than that it was as probable as not that Officer Toomey was acting outside the course of his employment when the automobile collision occurred. As requiring an affirmative answer to this question, the City points to evidence which it contends compels a finding that it was as probable as not that the employee was going home from work. The evidence was that the employee's home was in Hollis, which is westerly of Portland, and at the time of the collision the employee was driving in a general westerly direction at a place consistent with his being on a direct route to Hollis. The City also adverts to the following testimony of the claimant, herself: Q. Can you tell me how your husband are you aware of how your husband got from the City of Portland to Hollis, normally? A. You mean the route he took? Q. The route for this vehicle? A. Yes. It was usually the same route. The same one he took going home on the day of the accident, but it could vary. He didn't tell me, you know, today I'm going this way I'll be coming home that way. Q. From your statement then it is your belief that he was on his way home at the time of the accident? A. I expected him home. The foregoing evidence, however, is not sufficient to exclude as a reasonable view by a rational mind that it was more probable than not that the employee was not going home at the time of the collision. The testimony of the widow about the route was too vague to be of significance. Her statement about her expectation was not only basically unresponsive to the question asked but also was vague as to the time when, according to her expectation, her husband would be coming home. Similarly, it does not really assist the evaluation of the probabilities of whether or not the employee was actually going home, especially in light of the rather large distance between Hollis and Portland, that at the time of the collision the employee was just over the boundary line between Portland and Westbrook and happened to be proceeding in the same general direction as Hollis lies from Portland and was at a place on a direct route from Portland to Hollis. It was thus not established as a matter of law that it was as probable as not that at the time of the collision the employee was actually going home. It remained rationally open to the fact-finder to find, as his determination of fact, that more probably than not the employee, as a police officer in uniform, was not going home. As a determination of fact, such finding will not be upset on appeal. Moreover, upon a finding of fact that the employee was not going home when the collision occurred, it was further open to the Commissioner to find as a fact that notwithstanding that the employee was operating his own personal vehicle and had arrived at a place just over the boundary line separating the City of Portland from the City of Westbrook, it was more probable than not that he was acting in the course of his employment. In sum, on all of the evidence it was a genuine question of factand was not settled as a matter of lawwhether the presumption had been rebutted and caused to vanish from the case. The Commissioner's determination of this issue of fact, i. e., that the Commissioner found it more probable than not that the employee was in the course of his employmentrather than as probable as not that he had departed from the course of his employment,being a determination of fact, must be taken as final and binding on appeal. With the presumption thus surviving the onslaught of the countervailing evidence and continuing in play in the case, the Commissioner's ultimate conclusion was correct that the persistence of the presumption compels a favorable decision to the petitioner on the issue of whether the accidental death arose out of and in the course of his employment.