Court Opinion

ID: 9827090
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:09:35.373262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:22.918112
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellee insists that this court has entirely missed the point of her case. She insists that she does not seek to extend the benefit of the Compensation Act to a class not therein designated, but that she merely contends that the designated class, “parents,” should be extended over by implication to include appellee; or, in short, appellee insists that she was in fact a “parent” of the deceased employee because she cared for him through his childhood, in return for which he was morally bound, had he lived, to care for her in her advancing years. If the claimed distinction exists between the case made and the case decided by this court, then it is a *966technical distinction, and does not affect the merits of the decision.
Appellee invokes the case of McDonald v. Ins. Ass’n (Tex. Civ. App.) 267 S. W. 1074, in which it is held that, where one legally adopts a child under the statutory procedure therefor, such one thereupon becomes a “parent” within the meaning of the act. That is plainly so, for the simple reason that the statute expressly creates the relation of parent and child, the same as if the natural relation existed, and adjusts the rights and liabilities of the parties to that legal status. Under the terms of the Compensation Act, the parent in that case was entitled to be compensated for the accidental death of the child, without reference to the question of ' dependency. But in this case appellee’s only claim rests, after all and as a practical matter, upon dependency, which, under the statute, must be coupled with the relation of grandparents, children, brothers and sisters of the deceased employee, in order to entitle the claimant to compensation. Article 8306, § 8a, R. S. 1925.
We conclude that we properly appraised appellee’s case in the original opinion, to which we adhere, and overrule her motion for rehearing.