Court Opinion

ID: 9660931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:24:27.658273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:23.490457
License: Public Domain

MILLIKEN, Judge
(dissenting).
My difference with the majority opinion is a basic attitude toward statutory construction. Instead of worrying about whether we as a court were dotting some of the “i’s” and crossing some of the “t’s” left undotted and uncrossed by the Legislature, I would ask the purpose of the legislation —what did the Legislature want to do, and would then pursue a course calculated to effectuate what I thought the Legislature sought to accomplish. Such an approach is especially practicable in the field of social legislation such as the Workmen’s Compensation law and in the field of public administration generally, for inability to foresee all of the ramifications of the various fields affected is the very reason for the creation of boards of specialists by the Legislature.
The obvious purpose of the section of the Workmen’s Compensation Act involved here is to protect the employees of subcontractors, who are not financially responsible, when they work on a project supervised by a general contractor who has his own employees protected by Workmen’s Compensation and, corelatively, to prevent general contractors from relieving themselves of liability for compensation by doing through uncovered subcontractors what the general contractor would otherwise do directly through his own protected employees. The section declares “[it] shall apply only in cases where the injury occurred on, in or about the premises on which the principal contractor has undertaken to execute work or which are under his control otherwise or management,” thus impliedly reflecting the legislative intent to protect all of the workmen on such a job if the general contractor was protected by his acceptance of the Act from ordinary common law liability. Unless that is. the overall purpose of the legislation, it has little reason to be in the Workmen’s. Compensation law. We are not the only state with analogous statutes to contend with.
Statutory provisions with the same purpose as the one here involved may be found' in the Workmen’s Compensation laws of most of the states. According to Larson, Workmen’s Compensation Law, Sec. 49.111
“Thirty-nine states have adopted ‘contractor-under’ statutes, imposing on the general employer compensation liability (sometimes joint, sometimes primary, but usually secondary) to the employees of contractors (in most instances uninsured contractors) under him. It has become quite common to speak of the liability so created as that of the ‘statutory employer’ to a ‘statutory employee.’ This terminology is the most convenient yet devised for this new concept, and will be used *251Ihere, with the caution that it is inaccurate and misleading' in those states which regard the general employer merely as a sort of guarantor or insurer, having none of the immunities, such as immunity from common-law •suit, that go with employer status.
“The purpose of this legislation was •to protect employees of irresponsible •and uninsured subcontractors by im■posing ultimate liability on the pre•sumably responsible principal contrac■•tor, who has it within his power, in -choosing subcontractors, to pass upon their responsibility and insist upon appropriate compensation protection for their workers. The statute also aims to forestall evasion of the act by those •who might be tempted to subdivide their regular operations among sub■contractors, thus escaping direct employment relations with the workers •and relegating them for compensation protection to small contractors who fail to carry (and, if small enough, may not even be required to carry) compensation insurance.”
Could there be any better example of the need for legislation with this purpose than the case at bar?
The general contractor here contends that it cannot be liable until a claim “shall in the first instance be presented to and instituted against the immediate contractor” which procedure would, of couse, be futile in the present case because the immediate contractor was not covered by the Act. The general contractor contends that any liability it may have is secondary, not primary. In DeLonjay v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Company, 225 Mo.App. 35, 35 S.W.2d 911, the Court said:
“ * * * The cause does not say that the immediate employer must be liable to the employee under the act in order to make the principal contractor liable to the employee. * * * If the principal contractor does not have recourse (against the immediate contractor) in every case, it is because of a situation which the contractor itself has created by subcontracting with a minor employer who does not accept, and is therefore not subject to the provisions of the Act. Of this the contractor has no right to complain. The most that can be said of the clause in question is that it introduces ambiguity, and under the rule of liberal construction, this must be resolved in favor of the right of the employee to compensation. Surely, it does not justify interpolating into the act language which the Legislature did not see fit to put in it.”
And in Pruitt v. Harker, 328 Mo. 1200, 43 S.W.2d 769, in approving the DeLonjay case, the Missouri Supreme Court said:
“Even if they (the principal contractor) cannot recover over against a minor employer not subject to the act, yet it must be kept in mind that the act is purely elective as to all major employers * * * and such major employers may protect themselves by requiring the subcontractors, whether major or minor employers, to insure their employees.”
The Missouri opinions above adhere to the intention of such legislation. Regardless of any difference in wording between their comparable statute and ours, the very questions raised in the case at bar were raised there and disposed of on the basis of reasoning — of looking to the intention of the statute, and, consequently, concluding to protect the injured worker — the principal overall purpose of Workmen’s Compensation legislation. In 1935 Tennessee reached the same conclusion under a greatly similar statute, Maxwell v. Beck, 169 Tenn. 315, 87 S.W.2d 564; and North Carolina in Graham v. Wall, 220 N.C. 84, 16 S.E.2d 691. See, also, annotation in 105 A.L.R. 581 et seq.
For the reasons stated I dissent from the majority view, and would also allow recovery.
STEWART, C. J., concurs in this dissent.