Court Opinion

ID: 9829783
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:37:04.016079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:06.149610
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The original disposition of this appeal was based in part upon an assumed holding of our Commission of Appeals that an occupational disease is compensable, under our statutes, when induced or contributed to by the negligence of the employer. Barron v. Ins. Ass’n (Tex. Com. App.) 36 S.W.(2d) 464. We have concluded that the decision in that case does not warrant this court in giving effect to that holding in this case.
First, we are unable to escape the conviction that the question of negligence is *321wholly foreign to the letter and spirit of our Worlsmen’s Compensation Act (Vernon’s Ann. Civ. St. art. S306 et seq.), as well as to the decisions thereon. The purpose of the act is to provide compensation for accidental injuries to industrial employees, without regard to the question of negligence of employer or employee. It was designed as a form of life and accident insurance, payable upon the happening of'the contingencies provided against, when not intentionally induced or provoked by the employee. It contains no provisions which expressly, or by any sort of implication, enlarge the liability of the insurer to include injuries traceable to the negligence of the employer, if such injuries are not made compensable by express provisions. It is our firm conviction that if the Legislature had intended to make the negligence of the employer a test of compensa-bility in any contingency, that body would have expressed such intention in the law, and in the total absence of such expression the courts have no power to write it into the statute, and thus convert compensation cases into negligence cases. And if the courts fabricate a cause of action based solely upon the negligence of the employer, they thereby invite the defense of contributory negligence, and thus defeat the object of the law.
Secondly, the two authorities cited in the Barron Case, in support of the rule that occupational disease is compensable if contributed to by the negligence of the employer, do not purport to apply to compensation cases, but only to common-law actions for damages in negligence cases. Schneider Comp. Laws, p. 643, § 223; Gay v. Goal Co., 184 Iowa, 949, 169 N. W. 360. The text in Schneider, relied upon in the Barron Case, is but a quotation from the Gay Case, which was a common-law action for damages against an employer who did not carry compensation insurance. Those authorities laid down the rule invoked in the Barron Case, it is true, but they applied the rule to the common-law actions for damages there under consideration. They were not deciding or discussing any rule for compensation cases.
And, lastly, the assertion in the Barron Case, that a vocational disease not otherwise compensable is made so if contributed to by the negligence of the employer, was not necessary to the decision, for recovery was ordered in that case, primarily and efficiently, upon the finding that the injury was induced by accidental, specific injury, and for that reason was not vocational. Thus the language in the Barron Case, and here invoked by appellee and enforced by the trial court, was not necessary to that decision, was clearly dictum, and besides, as stated, was based upon a decision, and a text dependent upon that decision, which had no bearing upon the Barron Case, and in no sense supported it. We therefore conclude that the trial court erred in enforcing the rule stated, by including it in the definition of compensable injury, and by submitting to the jury the issues of negligent acts of the employer. Appellee objects to the consideration of appellant's prop ositions in which this matter is presented here, contending that the question was not properly raised below. It is true that the objections urged by appellant in the trial court were probably too general to support its first and second propositions here, but that is not true of its third and fourth propositions. The objections brought forward under those propositions were that the court erred in submitting the issues of the employer’s negligence, because those issues were immaterial and their submission prejudicial to tbe rights of appellant. That was sufficient.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing will be granted and the judgment reversed and the cause remanded.