Court Opinion

ID: 9590884
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:59:06.762266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:12:56.110659
License: Public Domain

Stukes, Justice,
(dissenting).
I regret that on the single, sharp issue on which the majority decision of this case depends, I dissent. I do not think that the exclusion from liability clause of our compensation law — -“those conducting his (the employer’s) business”— includes fellow-servants of injured employees. It is unreasonable to suppose that it was the legislative intent to immunize tort-feasant employees, in the absence of clear expression of that meaning. It would be a radical departure from the common law and without quid pro quo. As between employer and employee the compensation law is based on “give and take,” as has so often been expressed in the cases. But what does a wrongdoing employee give for escape from the ordinary liability for his torts? The answer is obvious —nothing. It seems to me that in the absence of impelling statute he must be considered and treated as a third person who tortiously injures the employee, who here happens to be his fellow employee.
As indicated, I find nothing in our statute to extinguish the common law liability of an employee to his fellow employee, just as there is nothing to extinguish liability to his employer. On the contrary, I think the statute implies otherwise. The last portion of section 7035-10 is: “he (the employer) or those conducting his business shall only be liable to any employee who elects to come under this article for personal injury or death by accident to the extent and in the manner herein specified.” There is no extent or manner of liability specified in the act of one employee to another so the provision is meaningless with respect to the problem in hand and should not, I think, be held to control. Moreover, the quoted statute itself, by its conjoint use of the terms, recognizes the distinction between an employee and those conducting the business of the employer. The section of the law which follows, 7035-11, conforms with the foregoing construction of 7035-10 and is of equal force, but clearer; it provides that the rights and remedies of an employee un*418der the act, quoting, “shall exclude all other rights and remedies * * * against (his — interpolated) employer at common law * * * ”. Thus the statutory exemption from common law liability relates to the employer, not a fellow employee, and to those conducting the employer’s business, Sec. 7035-10, which latter cannot be fairly held to include a mere employee or servant. Sec. 7035-11 further provides for recovery from, quoting, “any person other than such employer.” A fellow employee is certainly not “the employer.” Careful reading of the two sections together is conclusive upon my mind.
The rule which the majority opinion adopts, besides being in my view unjustified by a fair construction of our statute, is the minority rule, according to the authorities. “Fellow workmen are generally treated as third persons, * * * but a contrary conclusion has been reached in some cases.” 58 Am. Jur. 617, Workmen’s Compensation, § 61. To the same effect is 71 C. J. 1530, § 1565.
“Generally a fellow employee, subject to the exceptions noted above (not here applicable — interpolated) may be held liable as a third party. Likewise a foreman of a common employee has been held a third party as to the injured employee, but a superintendent and manager has been held not a third party,” citing cases from Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Yol. 3, Schneider, p. 212, sec. 842. In the 1949 pocket part of this volume are additional cases from Louisiana and Nebraska. The author points out at page 211 that acts of some other States, unlike ours, expressly nullify the third party liability of a fellow employee, citing Massachusetts and New York cases.
In the very new (1952) text of Larson, Workmen’s Compensation Law, it is said in Vol. 2, page 171, sec 72.10: “Under most statutes, immunity to common law suit is extended only to the employer. An injured employee can therefore sue his own co-employee for the latter’s negligence, and it follows logically that the employer can exercise subrogation rights against his own tortfeasor employee. This *419result has been supported by reference to the plain language of the statute, by the argument that existing rights of action should not be deemed destroyed in the absence of clear language, by calling upon the moral principle that a tortfeasor should not be relieved of the consequences of his own wrongdoing, and by stressing the danger to workmen themselves of a doctrine that persons engaged in dangerous occupations should be immune from the consequences of their negligence. A rule supported by such a variety of arguments should not be defeated by resort to such artificial by-products of tort law as the vice-principal doctrine, as happened in an Ohio case which denied a personal tort remedy against a tortfeasor foreman on the theory that he was the alter ego of the immune employer.” Cases from many jurisdictions are cited in support of the foregoing and the following is quoted in a footnote from Rehn v. Bingaman, 151 Neb. 196, 36 N. W. (2d) 856, 860: “To hold otherwise would unjustly confer upon every employee freedom to neglect his duty toward a fellow employee and thus escape with impunity from all liability for damages proximately caused by his own negligence.”
The New York decisions are of no value here because the compensation law of that State has been amended to make it the exclusive remedy for a covered employee both against the employer and “another in the same employ.” Williams v. Hartshorn, 296 N. Y. 49, 69 N. E. (2d) 557, 558. It is otherwise in New Jersey where the statutory remedy of comr pensation is made exclusive against the employer, as in this State, and the bringing of an action for negligence against a fellow servant causing the injury is not precluded. Stacy v. Greenberg, 1952, 9 N. J. 390, 88 A. (2d) 619. Other similar decisions may be found in the series of annotations which are concluded in 106 A. L. R. 1059, with references there to the earlier ones.
A well-reasoned West Virginia case is Tawney v. Kirkhart, W. Va., 44 S. E. (2d) 634, 641, which expressly overruled an earlier inconsistent decision of that court. It was *420there said: “There is no contract as between coemployees and they are subject to the provisions of the compensation act in their relationship with each other in no way. They pay nothing into the fund that entitles them to protection under its terms. We can perceive nothing in sound reasoning that would entitle a coemployee to gratuitous protection for his own misconduct. To hold that a coemployee is not liable for his own negligence would increase the hazard of employments and be contrary to public policy. We have been able to find nothing apart from an express constitutional or statutory provision such as exists in New York, Texas, Massachusetts and Virginia that would entitle him to an exemption from liability.” See also, Echols v. Chattooga Mercantile Co., 74 Ga. App. 18, 38 S. E. (2d) 675.
The majority opinion, I think clearly mistakenly, relies upon Warner v. Leder, 234 N. C. 727, 69 S. E. (2d) 6. It was an attempted action for negligence at common law against the defendant Leder who was one of Leder Brothers, Inc., president of the corporate employer and was conducting its business at the time of the injury to the plaintiff, which was compensable under the Workmen’s Compensation Law. It seems to me manifestly inapplicable to the question which we now decide.
Burns v. Carolina Power & Light Co., 4 Cir., 193 F. (2d) 525, also cited by the majority upon the construction of our compensation law is upon little or no reasoning but depends upon a Virginia and two North Carolina decisions. In the leading one of the latter, Essick v. City of Lexington, 232 N. C. 200, 60 S. E. (2d) 106, it was held that the immunity clause of the compensation law of that State, similar to ours, protected from suit at common law the treasurer and plant superintendent of a corporate employer who had paid workmen’s compensation for the death of an employee from injuries arising out of and in the course of his employment. Here again, I think the authority inapplicable to action against an ordinary fellow employee. The treasurer and plant superintendent of the corporate employer there were conduct*421ing its business and exempt from liability. The other North Carolina decision relied upon by the Court of Appeals in the Burns case is Bass v. Ingold, 232 N. C. 295, 60 S. E. (2d) 114. It was decided simultaneously with the Essick case and the opinion merely referred to the latter.
The Virginia case referred to above is Feitig v. Chalkley, 185 Va. 96, 38 S. E. (2d) 73, 76, which appears to concede that it is of a minority. The result was reached more upon philosophical considerations and reasons for which the provisions of the compensation law should be, rather than what they are. In this feature the Virginia statute is substantially the same as ours. The rationale is found in the following excerpt from the opinion: “By analogy, loss (to industry) by damage to an employee * * * is a loss within the field of industrial accidents intended by the act to be borne by industry as an industrial loss without opportunity for recoupment. What other meaning can be given to the phrase * * * ‘those conducting his business’ ?” But it is not a loss to industry we are concerned with; it is a loss to an employee which was caused by the negligence of a fellow employee, for which the law does not expressly or impliedly, I think, deny the common law right of recoupment. The unusual facts of the Feilig case are found in 184 Va. 553, 35 S. E. (2d) 827. In view of our limited function to construe and apply the law and not make it, I would not follow the highly respected Virginia court in this instance.