Court Opinion

ID: 9736328
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:52:23.23463+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:05.932604
License: Public Domain

Francis, J.
(concurring). I concur in the result reached by the court. On the facts of the case, however, I prefer to place the liability of the employer on a somewhat different basis. Assuming that horseplay occurred, it seems obvious that the petitioner’s injury resulted from the concurrence of that activity and an employment hazard chargeable to the employer. Put in terms usually appearing in the cases, the employment constituted a contributory cause. After petitioner had twice squirted his fellow worker, the retaliation took a form entirely unintended. The fellow worker picked up a pail containing what he believed to be water and threw the contents over petitioner. The contents, unknown to the thrower, were a highly inflammable lacquer thinner provided by the employer and used in the regular course of its work. A nearby open burner flame immediately ignited petitioner’s clothes, causing his severe burns. In such a situation, even though petitioner instigated the horseplay, the fortuitously untoward result, wholly unintended and not reasonably to be expected, following in the wake of the fellow employee’s act, should not cancel out the benefits of the statute. Such injury is not due to horseplay. Cf. Kulinka v. Flockhart Foundry Co., 9 N. J. Super. 495 (Cty. Ct. 1950); affirmed Bujalski v. Flockhart Foundry *594Co., 16 N. J. Super. 249 (App. Div. 1951); certification denied 8 N. J. 505 (1952).
Eraecis, J., concurring in result.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Weintraub, and Justices Jacobs, Francis, Proctor, Hall, Schettino and Haneman — 1.
For reversal — None.