Court Opinion

ID: 9680108
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:19:48.747136+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:25.431711
License: Public Domain

BARDGETT, Judge.
I respectfully dissent.
The principal opinion points out that the 1969 amendment to § 287.120 was enacted to remedy an alleged defect in the law which had resulted in decisions against compensation in the Kelley and Liebman cases, cited in the principal opinion. It also states that had the 1969 amendment been in effect at the time Kelley and Lieb-man were decided, compensation would have been awarded.
The majority opinion in Kelley v. Sohio Chemical Co., 392 S.W.2d 255 (Mo.banc 1965), denied compensation on a finding “that the assault had no connection with and did not arise out of the employment.” 1. c. 257. In Kelley the claimant was struck on the head by an unknown assailant on the employer’s premises during the noon hour.
In Liebman v. Colonial Baking Co., 391 S.W.2d 948 (Mo.App.1965), the claimant was a delivery man for the baking company. As he was walking toward a customer’s place of business, he was assaulted from behind by a drunken stranger without motivation or provocation.
In Liebman, the court of appeals said that while the assault occurred “in the course of” Liebman’s employment the question was whether it arose “out of” the employment. 1. c. 950. The court held the assault did not arise out of the employment and affirmed the denial of compensation.
It is true that both cases involved what appears to be unprovoked assaults on an employee, but the denial of compensation in neither case was premised on the fact that the assault was unprovoked. It was based upon the finding that the injury did not arise out of the employment.
Now, if the 1969 amendment to § 287.120 was adopted to correct the alleged defect in the law which resulted in the decisions against the employees in Kelley and Lieb-man, then the corrective legislation must, of necessity, have been directed to and, in my opinion, was directed to the basis upon which the compensation was denied in Kelley and Liebman.
The principal' opinion recognizes that the 1969 amendment was to make compensable subsequent injuries similar to the ones in Kelley and Liebman. That being so, it seems clear to me that the legislature’s attention was focused on the courts’ holdings that in Kelley and Liebman the injuries did not arise out of and in the course of the employment. Their method of correcting the alleged defect in the law as demonstrated by Kelley and Liebman was to provide that “accident” as used in 287.120 shall include “injury or death of the employee caused by the unprovoked violence or assault against the employee by any person.”
Sec. 1.010, RSMo 1969, V.A.M.S., provides, inter alia, “. . . all acts of the general assembly, or laws, shall be liberally construed, so as to effectuate the true intent and meaning thereof.”
The principal opinion appears to hold that the true intent and meaning of the *8081969 amendment was to make compensable that type of injury held to be noncompensable in Kelley and Liebman. Again — Kelley and Liebman were decided on the basis that those injuries did not arise out of the employment. This conclusion was not arrived at because the assaults or violence there involved were provoked or unprovoked but rather because the risk of common assault on the street in Liebman and the exposure to the assault in Kelley could not have been rationally foreseen — the risk did not arise as a direct causative result of the nature of the employment.
The legislature was addressing itself to this problem when it adopted the 1969 amendment. In my opinion, the legislative declaration that “accident” shall include injury or death of the employee caused by the unprovoked violence or assault against the employee by any person means that, when an employee while engaged in his employment is assaulted without provocation on the employee’s part, that injury is compensable.
In my opinion, the fact question in the instant case is whether the employee-claimant, Rufus Person, provoked the .assault upon him. The answer to that question, under the evidence, is that he did not provoke the attack. Therefore, the injury, in my opinion, is compensable.
In view of the 1969 amendment, I think it is entirely too tenuous to use the reason the assailant attacked the employee as the criterion for compensability unless it is shown that the reason for the attack was such as would constitute a defense under that amendment — provocation by the employee. That reason — provocation—is the only reason the law allows as a defense to a claim for injuries that arise during the course of employment, in my opinion.
For the foregoing reasons, I would hold the injury compensable under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, and therefore I dissent.