Court Opinion

ID: 9561114
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:03:37.317728+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:37.812622
License: Public Domain

Quillian, Judge,
dissenting from Division 4. I can not agree that the Workmen’s Compensation Board had exclusive jurisdic*715tion of any action resulting from the deceased’s death. The petition did not disclose, nor was there in my opinion sufficient evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, to support a finding that on the day the deceased was killed the defendant had in its employ as many as ten employees within the State. Borochoff v. Fowler, 98 Ga. App. 411 (1), 414 (105 SE2d 764). While the witness, Mr. Disharoon, testified that at the time the case was tried the defendant had over three hundred employees in its Atlanta office, this was nearly two years subsequent to the date on which the deceased sustained the fatal injury.
Although the rule of evidence is well established that a status once proved to exist continues until there is proof of a change or adequate cause for assuming there has been a change (Roberts v. Hill, 81 Ga. App. 185 (2) (58 SE2d 465)), there is, however, no presumption that a present proven status existed in the past. This is made clear in Glenn v. Tankersley, 187 Ga. 129, 130 (7) (200 SE 709): “The doctrine of continuity, that is, that a state of things proved to have once existed is presumed to have continued to exist until a change or some adequate cause of change appears (Anderson v. Blythe, 54 Ga. 507, 508), does not include a presumption either that something shown to exist will continue in the future, or that it had previously existed. The doctrine is limited to the presumption that something which has been shown to have existed has thereafter continued to exist.”
In the writer’s opinion this court has no authority to take judicial notice that American Oil Company or any other corporation has ten or more employees within this State.
I am authorized to state that Judge Whitman concurs in this dissent.