Court Opinion

ID: 9768073
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:41:21.322141+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:36.453195
License: Public Domain

FINCH, Chief Justice
(concurring).
I concur in the result reached in the principal opinion for the reasons which follow.
The contract of employment was entered into in Missouri. The employer, as he had a right to do, elected to reject the Missouri Workmen’s Compensation Act, but as an incident of that rejection it may not assert as a defense that the employee assumed the risk of injury or that injury was caused in any degree by the employee’s negligence. § 287.080, V.A.M.S. See also § 287.110(2), V.A.M.S.; Moles v. Kansas City Stock Yards Company of Maine, Mo.App., 434 S.W.2d 752.
Since plaintiff’s injury occurred in Kansas, the substantive law of Kansas controls the affirmative duties which defendant owed to plaintiff with respect to his employment, but the law of Missouri, the forum of the action, determines, as previously stated, that the defenses of contributory negligence and assumption of risk are not available to the defendant. Thus, as the Court said in Moles v. Kansas City Stock Yards Company of Maine, supra, 434 S.W.2d l.c. 755, the effect of waiver of the Missouri Workmen’s Compensation Act “is to make the negligence of the employer, or the absence thereof, the sole and only issue to be determined insofar as liability is concerned.” If defendant breached a duty or duties to plaintiff in regard to his employment and thereby was negligent and plaintiff was injured as a result, he is entitled to recover. If it did not, the plaintiff may not recover because it is not an insurer against injury to its employees.
Appellant cites and relies upon the cases of West v. Cudahy Packing Co., 86 Kan. 890, 122 P. 1024; McCoy v. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co., 129 Kan. 781, 284 P. 417; Barlovich v. Union Pac. R. Co., 144 Kan. 186, 58 P.2d 1061; and Uhlrig v. Shortt, 194 Kan. 68, 397 P.2d 321, as establishing that there was no duty on defendant in this case and that a verdict for defendant should have been directed. However, an analysis of the above cases and the case of Ballard & Ballard Co. v. Lee’s Adm’r., 131 Ky. 412, 115 S.W. 732, on which the West case originally relied, discloses that the philosophy of all of these cases is that the “plaintiff assumed the risk which he encountered and that the injury sustained cannot be regarded as the result of defendant’s negligence.” McCoy v. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co., 284 P. l.c. 419. This being true, these cases do not mandate a directed verdict in this case because the defense of assumption of risk is not available as a result of defendant’s rejection of the Missouri Workmen’s Compensation Act.
Appellant also cites Piepmeyer v. Johnson, Mo., 452 S.W.2d 97, as showing that plaintiff did not make a submissible case. However, Piepmeyer related solely to a master-servant relationship, unaffected by a rejection of the Workmen’s Compensation Act with its resultant elimination of certain defenses. Hence, the emphasis on knowledge of plaintiff of the dangerous situation and her ability to have avoided the faulty pavement which appeared in Piepmeyer has no application here.
I conclude that under the evidence the issue of whether the defendant was negligent was for the jury and that a verdict should not have been directed. I agree with the conclusion in the principal opinion that Instruction No. 3 was prejudicially erroneous and that the judgment must be reversed and the cause remanded for new trial for that reason.