Court Opinion

ID: 9826378
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 15:51:21.326299+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:02.272352
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marion:
I concur in the opinion of Mr. Acting Associate Justice Johnson, but desire to state the *462reasons for my conclusion from a slightly different viewpoint.
In the last analysis, appellant’s position is this: By virtue of a custom not to pay discharged employees until they vacate the houses furnished them, Cato impliedly contracted that in the event of his discharge his earned wages should become due and payable, not immediately upon his discharge, as the statute (Section 5592, Vol. 3, Code 1922) requires, but upon or after the vacation of the house furnished him by the Mills as a part of the contract of hiring. It is not disputed that at the time of his discharge the Mills owed Cato a certain sum of money as wages, and that up to the time of.such discharge the Mills also owed him the use of the house. At the termination of the contract of employment by Cato’s discharge, the obligation of the Mills, imposed in express terms by the statute, was to pay Cato’s earned wages immediately, and the obligation of Cato was immediately to vacate the Mills’ house. In the absence of a contractual stipulation to that effect, it is entirely clear that, in the face of the express mandate of the statute, the Mills could not postpone the performance of the statutory duty imposed to pay the earned wages until after the discharged employee had performed his obligation to vacate the house.
In that situation, certainly, the Mills would have had no more right to say to Cato, “Perform your obligation to vacate the house, and then we will perform our obligation to pay your earned wages,” than Cato would have had to say to the Mills, “You discharge your duty to pay my wages, and then I will discharge my obligation to vacate your house.” That the effect of the statute was to make the performance by the employer of the payment of the earned wages an act prior in point of time to the fulfillment of the employee’s reciprocal obligation to vacate the house would not seem open to serious question. The language of the statute is that “the wages which have been earned by such *463discharged laborer shall become immediately due and payable.” The duty imposed upon the corporation to pay immediately upon the discharge, regardless of any reciprocal duty of the employee to vacate the employer’s premises or to perform any other act of like nature, is absolute. If, therefore, the Mills in this case had a right to make the wages due Cato payable upon or after his vacation of the house, instead of payable immediately upon or after his discharge, as the statute expressly requires, such right must rest upon the theory that the corporation may lawfully contract so to limit the performance of the absolute duty mandatorily imposed by the statute.
Conceding the very doubtful proposition that the record in this case is sufficient to support a finding of fact that Cato agreed with the Mills that his wages in the event of his discharge should not become due ancl payable until he vacated the Mills’ house, I am clearly of the opinion that the Mills could not, by such contractional stipulation with its employe, relieve itself of the absolute duty imposed by the statute to pay the laborer’s earned wages immediately upon his discharge. It is an elementary and fundamental principle of law that no person can by contract relieve himself of a duty which he owes to the public independently of the contract. And even under the view that a master may under some circumstances contract against the performance of' duties which attach as a matter of law to the contractual relation of master and servant, it is well settled that the master cannot so contract, where the interest of the public requires-the performance of a particular duty, or where, because the parties do not stand on an equal footing, the weaker party is compelled to submit to the stipulation in question. 6 R. C. L., 727, § 132. Johnston v. Fargo, 184 N. Y., 379; 77 N. E., 388; 7 L. R. A. (N. S.), 537; 6 Ann. Cas., 1. Osgood v. Central Vermont R. Co., 77 Vt., 334; 60 A., 137; 70 L. R. A., 930. Hartford Fire Ins. Co. v. Chicago, M. & St. P. R. Co., 70 F., 201; 17 C. C. A., 62; 30 L. R. A., 193.
*464It is true that the foregoing authorities apply the proposition announced above to contractual exemption from liability for negligence generally, and to the cases cited may be added decisions of our own Court to the same effect, such as Wallingford v. Columbia & G. R. Co., 26 S. C., 258; 2 S. E., 19. Johnson v. Charleston & S. Ry. Co., 55 S. C., 152; 32 S. E., 2; 33 S. E., 174; 44 L. R. A., 645. Reed v. Southern Ry., 75 S. C., 170; 55 S. E., 218, and Kirkland v. Charleston & W. C. Ry., 79 S. C., 276; 60 S. E., 668, 128 Am. St. Rep., 848. But between the legal duty of an employer to furnish a safe place to work, for example, and the duty here imposed by statute upon corporate employers to pay discharged laborers their earned wages immediately, there is, in the aspect of the matter having to do with the public’s interest in the performance of the two duties, no sound basis for a distinction. The very validity of the statute here in question depends upon the soundness of the view that it is a public measure, enacted in the interest of the public welfare. Wynne v. Seaboard Air Line Ry., 96 S. C., 1; 79 S. E., 521, Ann. Cas., 1916B, 133. Champion v. Hermitage Cotton Mills, 98 S. C., 418; 82 S. E., 672. Trammell v. Victor Mfg. Co., 102 S. C., 483; 86 S. E., 1057. Burden v. Woodside Cotton Mills, 104 S. C., 435; 89 S. E., 474. If so, the duty imposed upon corporate employers by this statute is one charged with a public interest, which is independent of the interests of the individual parties to the contract of employment, and cannot be made the subject of contractual barter and sale between the corporate employer and the laborer.
Indeed, the nature of the public interest in the duty imposed upon corporate employers by the statute is well illustrated by the case at bar. No more reasonable ground can be assigned for the enactment of this law than the implied legislative finding of fact that the members of the class of laborers affected are dependent upon their earned wages, not only for a livelihood, but for the means absolutely es*465sential to enable them, when discharged, to vacate, move their families and household effects, and find employment elsewhere. If Cato had no money with which to move his family and effects elsewhere, the refusal of the Mills to pay his wages practically hog-tied him on the Mills’ premises, with the result that, deprived of employment and without means to move, he became automatically liable to the Mills for the rent of his house, which liability in a short time time would eat up the small balance of earned wages due him and leave him a financial derelict- — a potential menace to, or a public charge upon, society.
Without enlarging here upon the rationale of the law as a matter of public policy, it is sufficient for present purposes to repeat that the duty imposed by this statute upon corporate employers is a public duty in the discharge of which the public has an interest which is independent of the .interests of the individual parties to the particular contract of employment in question, and that against the performance of such public.duty the contractual stipulation here relied on, under the fundamental principle that private citizens may not by contract abrogate the interest of the public in the discharge of duties imposed by statute, was utterly ineffectual to relieve the Mills of the duty to pay Cato’s earned wages immediately upon or after his discharge.
If, after the payment of his wages, Cato had proved recalcitrant in the matter of promptly vacating the Mills’ house, the corporation would have had the same remedy that any other employer or landowner in this State has to eject one in unlawful possession of another’s premises. If that remedy be ineffectual or inadequate, corrective measures are for the lawmaking power, and not for this Court.