Court Opinion

ID: 9646491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:01:00.527096+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:38.548295
License: Public Domain

CARVER, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. My colleagues correctly decided that an issue and definition of “accidental injury” was required by the pleadings and the evidence and reversed the trial court judgment for their absence.
I am convinced, however, that my colleagues erred in further holding that a ping-pong game, merely permitted or tolerated by an employer at work breaks, was a setting in which an injury (if any) could be labeled as “having to do with and originating in the work, business, trade or profession of the employee” or was received by an employee “while engaged in or about the furtherance of the affairs or business of his employer” as required by our Compensation Act Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 8309 § 1(4) (Vernon 1967). My colleagues rely on a text, Larson’s “Workman’s Compensation” whose author honestly footnotes a difference of opinion in other jurisdictions while expressing his own opinion in the text. The author does not rest his opinion on Texas cases nor can my colleagues. Clevenger v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 396 S.W.2d 174 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1965, writ ref’d n. r. e.), relied upon by my colleagues, involved a company picnic case at which attendance (and playing baseball out of which the injury arose) was so strongly urged by Cleven-ger’s superiors that he feared for his job if he didn’t attend and play ball. Judge Williams’ opinion correctly held the employer had intentionally made the picnic a part of Clevenger’s job and thus its risks were covered under the Compensation Act. Judge Williams’ quote from the Larson text, more broad than the facts before him, is not to be deemed binding on this court. Correctly assessed, Clevenger supports a conclusion that recreation (and its risks) are not a part of the job unless the employer makes it so. This test has been consistently applied in Texas. In Campbell v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 378 S.W.2d 354 (Tex.Civ.App.—Eastland 1964, writ ref’d n. r. e.), the employer did not make a company picnic compulsory, or useful to some business purpose, but merely invited attendance at the employee’s choice; thus, an employee’s death by drowning while at the picnic was not cover*498ed by the Compensation Act. In Employer’s Mutual Liab. Ins. of Wis. v. Sanderfer, 382 S.W.2d 144 (Tex.Civ.App.—Houston 1964, writ ref’d n. r. e.), the employer did make a recreational hunting trip a part of the job when he sent an employee to a hunting lodge to mingle with customers and prospective customers of the employer; thus, the employee’s accident was covered by the Compensation Act. In Southern Cas. Co. v. Ehlers, 14 S.W.2d 111 (Tex.Civ.App.—San Antonio 1929, no writ), the employer did not make going to a dance or being injured in departing therefrom a part of the job of delivering a sold car to a distant town; thus, the Compensation Act did not apply. The foregoing cases are all the Texas authorities found in point and this court is not, in my opinion, free to disregard them for a text dependent upon authorities in foreign jurisdictions. I would hold that recreation chosen by an employee, at any location, merely permitted or tolerated by the employer, does not “have to do with’’ or “originate” in the work, trade or profession of the employer. Nor is an employee’s injury, while engaged in recreation of his own choice, without compulsion by his employer, received “while engaged in or about the furtherance of the affairs or business of his employer,”
I am also convinced that my colleagues erred ’ in holding that the claimant, with only ordinary human experience, can prove an “injury” occurred when absolutely nothing happened from which an injury could ordinarily be inferred by the use of common sense and experience. This claimant during prior employment suffered a ruptured disc in.February 1976 as diagnosed by objective medical tests. This same ruptured disc, and an adjacent degenerated disc, was confirmed and repaired by surgery in December 1976, yet the claimant, and only the claimant, testified that her disability related to a no-event ping-pong game in November 1976 at her current employment although surgery failed to reveal any injury but the February rupture. I would conclude that neither ordinary human experience nor common sense, supports the claimant’s conclusion nor, in fact, the opposite conclusion. I would deem that any conclusion as to the cause in fact of the disability of the claimant under these circumstances, could only be shown, if at all, by competent medical testimony as directed by our supreme court in Parker v. Employers Mutual Liberty Insurance Company of Wisconsin, 440 S.W.2d 43 (Tex.1969). A surgically confirmed single ruptured disc cannot support a claim against one employer in February and a second claim against a second employer in November.
Remand might be suitable in this case, if the only issues were directed to the correct proof on the cause of disability and a correct charge on accidental injury. However, retrial is not necessary to develop further the already sufficient facts compelling the exclusion of permissive recreational injury from coverage under our Compensation Act. I would reverse and render on the ground that accidental injury during work-break recreation, chosen by an employee and merely tolerated by the employer, is not a risk covered by our Compensation Act.