Court Opinion

ID: 9595070
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:35:17.97334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:34:21.442347
License: Public Domain

CURTIS, J., Dissenting.
I dissent. I agree with the opinion in awarding compensation for the injury sustained by the employee while in the store where his employer had directed him to make a purchase. I cannot agree, however, with the majority opinion holding that the employee was entitled to an award for the injury sustained by him after he had left the store and was in pursuit of his assailant. The facts of-this case bring it clearly under the rule announced in Northwestern Pac. R. R. Co. v. Industrial Acc. Com., 174 Cal. 297, 306 [163 Pac. 1000, L. R. A. 1918A, 286], and kindred cases cited in the majority opinion, which hold that, “When a servant of his own accord and without the direction of his master, steps outside the scope of his employment, whether on the master’s business or his own, the master owes him no duty as to the dangers he encounters, and is not liable for the injury received.”
I can see but little resemblance in the facts in this case and the ease of Matter of Field v. Charmette Knitted Fabric Co., 245 N. Y. 139 [156 N. E. 642]. In that case the superintendent of a mill had some words with an employee a few minutes before closing time. The employee waited outside of the mill, and as the superintendent stepped out of the mill, *590he was struck in the face by the employee. The court held that, “Here, almost in the very act of putting his foot without the mill, the employee is confronted by a danger engendered by his work within. The situation would be hardly different if a struggle, begun back of the threshold, had ended in a fatal blow delivered on the walk. No reasonable opportunity had been offered the assaulted man to separate himself from the plant, its animosities and dangers.” What similarity can there be in those facts and the facts in the present case?
In the case now before us, the injured employee when he left the store was in no danger whatever. He not only had reasonable opportunity to separate himself from the dangers within the store, but the dangers within the store had ceased to exist. He then exposed himself to a further danger, not only outside, but some distance from the store in which he received his first injury. He thereby stepped outside the scope of his employment, and was at a place where his master owed him no duty as to the dangers there encountered.
The ease of Pendl v. Haenel, 229 App. Div. 52 [241 N. Y. Supp. 59], is equally ineffectual to take the present case out of the general rule which denies compensation to an employee for an injury received by him outside of his employment. In the Pendí case, the injured party was the superintendent of the building in which he found a negro wandering around in the basement who had exhibited a knife and frightened the superintendent’s wife, and then fled from the building. The superintendent pursued the negro and was stabbed by the latter some one hundred and fifty feet from the building. The court held: “We are not to determine whether the pursuit was negligent or even sensible, but only whéther it was in connection with his master’s business. Decedent had to deal with a vicious criminal who came in the building of which he was superintendent. Persons lawfully there might be injured, or the property of his employer destroyed or stolen. The intruder might have had a design to ascertain the plan of the interior of the building in preparation for a later burglarious or felonious entrance. The continuation of the pursuit for one hundred and fifty feet beyond the basement store was not an abandonment of the employment. ’ ’ In that case the pursuit of the intruder by the superintendent outside the building was held to have been made “in connee*591tion with his master’s business”, as it was done for the purpose of protecting his employer’s property. In the instant case, it cannot be said that the pursuit by the injured party had any connection with or relation to the property of his master. Whatever may have been the purpose of the pursuit, it was wholly disassociated from the interests or property of the master. The Pendí ease fails to furnish any exception to the general rule that when a servant of his own accord steps outside the scope of his employment, the master is not liable for any injury received by the servant while acting beyond the scope of his employment.
Houser, J., concurred.
Rehearing denied. Edmonds, J., and Houser, J., voted for a rehearing.