Court Opinion

ID: 9535833
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:45:14.97401+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:21.607073
License: Public Domain

POMEROY, Justice
(concurring specially) :
I concur in the result. I would add only a comment as to the rationale underlying my conclusion that the appeal must be sustained and the case remanded for rehearing. I am prompted to do this because the dissenting opinion appears to me to be set in a framework of facts quite different from those on which my conclusion is based.
Mr. Justice Webber in his dissenting opinion has said that the Commissioner has found that “[the] petitioner was exposed to no greater risk than the public.” He then refers to the well-established principle that the evidence and inferences reasonably to be drawn therefrom must be viewed in the light most favorable to the Commissioner’s finding.
He then continues:
“On the evidence presented he could properly conclude that the petitioner left the employer’s premises and edged her car into Front Street to a point where she could see oncoming traffic; that based upon the judgment she then made of the speed and distance of approaching vehicles she elected not to stop and wait but rather to seek to enter the stream of traffic ahead of them; and that she was thereafter involved in an accident in the center of the public street.”
I agree that the rule is that when the Industrial Accident Commissioner has made a finding of fact, the evidence and inferences reasonably to be drawn therefrom must be viewed in the light most favorable to the Commissioner’s finding.
I respectfully disagree, however, with Mr. Justice Webber’s conclusion that the Commissioner could properly have made a finding of fact with respect to what I consider to be the controlling issue in the case.
As I read the record, the Commissioner interpreted the governing law to be that if the injury occurred in a place which was physically off the premises owned, controlled or provided by the employer, such fact was determinative of the issue whether or not the injury occurred in the course of employment.
In his decree the Commissioner stated as his view of the law of Maine that off-premises accidents to employees are not compensable unless they fall into one of the four exceptions specifically described in Rawson’s Case, 126 Me. 563, 140 A. 365 (1928).1
I disagree with such interpretation of law.
*872I also do not agree, as Mr. Justice Web-ber' suggests, that the Commissioner could properly reach the conclusion of fact that the injury occurred at a point in the highway where petitioner could have seen oncoming traffic and she made an intelligent decision to proceed.
The record demonstrates that petitioner’s attorney asked this question:
“Q Did you say that you had just reached the point of where you could see when you were hit ?
“A Well — ”
The following colloquy then occurred:
Employer’s Counsel: “I object to the form of the question.”
Commissioner: “No, it is not relevant anyway.”
When the petitioner sought to show that the point where the employer’s road met the highway was a “dangerous intersection,” the Commissioner refused to permit the evidence to be introduced labeling it “purely immaterial.”
Obviously, therefore, the Commissioner bottomed his conclusion on the undisputed fact that the accident occurred off the employer’s premises.
Because of the Commissioner’s eviden-tiary ruling that whether or not she was able to see up the highway was “not relevant anyway,” petitioner was precluded from explaining what the true situation was. Consequently, the Commissioner could not properly conclude that she “left the employer’s premises and edged her car into Front Street to a point where she could see oncoming traffic and that based upon the judgment she then made of the speed and distance of approaching vehicles she elected not to stop and wait but rather to seek to enter the stream of traffic ahead of her.”
I concur in the conclusions reached by the majority of the Court that the appeal must be sustained because I conclude that when a condition exists which makes entrance to and egress from the employer’s premises extrahazardous to employees and such hazard is not common to the traveling public,. it can be said there is a “special hazard,” constituting a recognized exception to the off-premises non-liability rule.2
The employee in my view should have been permitted opportunity to demonstrate that such special hazard did exist, if such be the fact, and that the accident, though occurring off the employer’s premises, occurred at a point where the hazard created by the employment was still operative and controllingly effective.
Mr. Justice WERNICK authorizes me to say that he joins with me in this concurring opinion.

. As pointed out in the opinion by Mr. Justice Weatherbee the exceptions listed in Rawson’s Case, supra, were not considered to be exclusive.

. “In almost all of tlie earliest cases, and many of the current cases as well, the element of special hazard needed no stress, since they were typically cases involving railway crossings or rights-of-way. Before the days of the garden-site factory and the industrial park, plants were often located in such a way that the only way to get to them was to pick one’s way through switching tracks, sidings, and even main lines. To deny workmen’s compensation to employees injured because of the necessity of daily running such a gauntlet struck most courts as out of tune with the broad concept of work-connection.
“Of course, there is no reason why the special-hazard exception should not be applied to special hazards of nonrailroad character.” Larson, Law of Workmen’s Compensation, § 15.13, and cases cited.