Court Opinion

ID: 9858843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:57:49.182091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:57:02.050258
License: Public Domain

BARHAM, Justice
(concurring).
The majority has held that the plaintiff is entitled to recover workmen’s compensation benefits for injuries received by him as a consequence of lifting and straining while preparing a display of canned goods in a large chain grocery. The majority has found that the plaintiff is not employed in one of the named hazardous occupations under R.S. 23:1035. It has not in the opinion made the operation of large supermarkets hazardous occupations. The majority has resorted to a jurisprudential rule which was created to extend coverage to injured employees who were not engaged in “hazardous occupations”. Authority for that rule cannot be found in the Workmen’s Compensation Act. The majority has allowed the plaintiff to recover, not because he was engaged in strenuous, endangering work which gave rise to his injury, but because upon a few occasions he came in contact with a conveyor and a cash register which were operated by electrical current. Plaintiff only occasionally was in contact with these devices, and he was not injured by these devices. Indeed, the devices were so designed as to offer only a minimal chance for injury, and it is not seriously argued that the electricity with which they were charged offers more than a modicum of danger of electrocution.
The majority states: “ * * * R.S. 23:1035 declares that its provisions shall apply to every person performing services arising out of and incidental to his employment in the course of his employer’s business in certain named hazardous trades, one of which is the ‘operation * * * of apparatus charged with electrical current.’ The language is clear and unambiguous.” (Emphasis here and elsewhere is mine.) If that language is clear and unambiguous, then the majority cannot hold for the plaintiff because he was not em*233ployed or doing services in the trade or occupation of operating apparatus charged with electrical curent. The majority’s actual holding comes under the jurisprudence which states that even when the occupation or business of the employer is not one named as hazardous and has not been defined as hazardous by the courts, nevertheless an employee in that business who has substantial contact with features of the employer’s business which can be classified as hazardous may claim workmen’s compensation.
I would allow the plaintiff to recover under either of two theories. First, the named hazardous occupations of R.S. 23:1035 are not exclusive. The last paragraph of that provision' reads: “If there be or arise any hazardous trade, business or occupation or' work other than those hereinabove enumerated, it shall come under the provisions of this Chapter. The question of whether or not a trade, business, or occupation not named herein is hazardous may be determined by agreement between the employer and employee or by submission at the instance of either to the court having jurisdiction over the employer in a civil case. The decision of the court shall not be retroactive in its effect.” The majority read the last two sentences as modifying the first and thus reasoned that only one means is provided for naming new hazardous occupations. This is not the correct interpretation. It is true that an employee and his employer may agree that an occupation is hazardous, or either may submit the question to a court for a prospective declaratory determination. However, the court must declare in any case, when warranted under the facts, that a trade or occupation is hazardous and is included under R.S. 23:1035, and that holding is applicable to the case at issue and all others of a similar nature.* The Legislature has clearly mandated the courts to classify, when necessary, new occupations as hazardous.
From the record in this case, we have ascertained that the defendant Weingarten is engaged in a large chain grocery operation. As a part of this business,_ central warehouses are maintained and warehouses are maintained in the rear of each supermarket. The supermarkets are equipped with electrical slicing and grinding devices and heat seal machines in the meat departments. Large delivery vans bring stock to the local stores and pick up stock for exchange with other stores. A parking lot is provided for the customers, and employees of the store must retrieve the carts which are used for carrying groceries from all over this area heavily con*235gested with automobile traffic. Electrical devices for heating, for cooling, and for other purposes are maintained throughout the store. Moreover, the principal duty of the plaintiff here, and of many employees of such a store, is to stock the warehouse in the rear of the store, remove stock from that warehouse, and place it upon the shelves for display and sale in the front of the grocery. They must lift heavy boxes and sacks. They must climb ladders or use other devices for reaching heights. I am of the opinion that the modern supermarket should be defined by this court under the legislative grant of R.S. 23:1035 to be a hazardous occupation, and that all employees in such an occupation are covered by workmen’s compensation and are entitled to recover for their injuries regardless of their duties with the establishment or their contact or lack of contact with so-called “hazardous features” of the operation.
Second, even without determining that the supermarket in this case, and others like it are hazardous trades, businesses, or occupations, I would determine that the plaintiff should recover, but not simply because he works around electrical devices which are well protected. Our jurisprudence has stated that if an employee comes in contact with “hazardous features” of an employer’s business which is not classified as hazardous and he is regularly and frequently exposed to such hazards, he is entitled to recover under workmen’s compensation. The difficulty with the rule as enunciated by this jurisprudence is that the courts have resorted to R.S. 23:1035 to define “hazardous features”. R.S. 23:1035 defines only hazardous occupations. Nowhere in the workmen’s compensation act is “hazardous features” defined. Therefore, since we have jurisprudentially created the rule concerning hazardous work in a non-hazardous occupation, we should judicially interpret what constitutes hazardous features in order to make that rule realistic, meaningful, adequate, and current.
R.S. 23:1035 was adopted in 1914 and,has not been changed since that time. The Legislature intended that the courts of this state supply the necessary interpretation to make the Workmen’s Compensation Act applicable to present times. Sixty years after the passage of that particular section, we are still applying definitions which were used by the Legislature to correct ills then apparent. The Legislature was . trying .to provide some financial assistance to the employees who it believed in those' times were most exposed to harm because of the nature of the business in which they were-employed. While operation of motor vehicles for hire is not a named hazardous occupation, certainly the Legislature of 1914, if it were possible, and our present Legislature would join us in stating that it is an occupation far more hazardous than *237chimney-sweeping, which is a named hazardous occupation. See footnote, supra.
The accidents envisioned by the Legislature of 1914 were the ones which were common to the times. These injuries anticipated were dismemberment, breaking and mangling of members of the body, and cutting or burning of the body by the many new machines and devices of the industrial age. The injuries common in workmen’s compensation cases today occur not only from contact with machinery but from exposure to risks of harm that are totally disassociated with machinery.
As previously noted, hazardous features of employment, hazardous work, are not defined by the statute. Rather than be strait jacketed and misled by resorting to an inapplicable section of the statute for definition of hazardous activities, we should be realistic and include hazard in fact. Heavy lifting, climbing, exposure to excessive heat, and numerous other duties should be declared to be hazardous work or hazardous features of employment in an nonhazardous trade. We cannot wrap ourselves in the cocoon of R.S. 23:1035 and declare that we are bound to define hazardous duties under the terminology there found. That section was not intended as a definition of hazardous features of employment, and it does not sensibly define that term. Is it reasonable to believe that our Legislature intended that a salesman in a nonhazardous occupation who travels by railroad should be covered by the act, but that a laborer in the same occupation who lifts hundred-pound bags or pushes a heavily loaded wheelbarrow all day should not be covered? Do we really believe that the law anticipated that all who flip light switches should recover under the act, but that their fellow employees who lift and strain all day at hard, physical labor should not ?
The plaintiff should recover because the business in which he was employed is hazardous, and we should declare it.so. .Alternatively he should recover because the lifting and moving of merchandise, the climbing, and the other general duties required of him in his employment were hazardous work in fact — a hazardous feature of his employment.
I respectfully concur.

 Haddad v. Commercial Truck Co., 146 La. 897, 84 So. 197 (1920) ; Plick v. Toye Bros. Auto & Taxicab Co., 13 La.App. 525, 127 So. 59 (Orl.App.1930) ; Labostrie v. Weber, 15 La.App. 241, 130 So. 885 (Orl.App.1930).