Court Opinion

ID: 9563760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:46:27.790627+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:04.060958
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent, suggesting that the main opinion has misfired completely. It volunteers and raises an issue favorable to plaintiff and unfavorable to defendants, which was not suggested by anyone in this case. Gratuitously and without benefit of anyone’s request to do so, the majority opinion attacks the findings of the Commission as to amount of income and winds up by sending the case back for another try. In my opinion the reversal of a case on a point not pressed *121by any litigant is not consonant with the ■duty to preserve taxpayers’ money where possible.
The only issue here is whether the plaintiff was self-employed, and in my opinion there is no question but that he was, the breakdown of farm income by the main opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. In concluding as it does, the main opinion cannot escape the fallacious and arbitrary assumption that a person is not self-employed if he happens to make less in his usual and customary business than he would receive during the lay-off period. Such assumption does complete violence to the ■accepted meaning of clear, understandable language, and fails to recognize competent authority.1
Although it should not be necessary to anwer an issue that was never raised by anyone except by this court for the first time on appeal and without any request to examine the findings as to farm income, or without claim made that they were in error, in fairness to the defendants, who ■must be taken aback with the turn of events •on this appeal, the analysis of the findings by this court in what appears to be a most labored effort, requires this writer to comment upon it. The main opinion forgot to ■tell us that in addition to the items which it lists, the record clearly reflects that the plaintiff also had under cultivation 7 acres of barley, 10 acres of oats and 8 or 9 acres of nurse crop planted with the grain, to which not a farthing’s value is assigned by this court, although common knowledge would dictate that the fact finder may have assigned a considerable value to these rather extensive crops in arriving at his figure. Although not an item of any considerable magnitude, the main opinion again forgot to tell us what a year’s milk supply from two cows was worth in making its calculations in attacking the Commission’s findings. The majority opinion, by a sort of silence, minimizes the nature and extent of the self-employment involved in this case. It neglected to tell us that the 52 year old applicant has been a farmer, not a miner, all his life, that about 10 years ago he found himself unable to make a complete living as a farmer without a supplementary income. It fails to point out that the applicant admitted that “We are trying to make that farm our life, our livelihood,” and that for many years prior to his mine work and during the entire time he was employed at the mine, both in working periods and lay-off periods he was actively and continuously engaged in farming. The main opinion also ignores the fact that he had owned a farm all his life.
After a rather microscopic review of the evidence concerning value, and without conceding that the Commission’s findings were *122arbitrary or capricious, a condition precedent to their annulment by us, the opinion then asserts that there was such uncertainty as to the exact amount of farm income as to require sending the case back to upset the findings of the Department Representative, the findings of the Appeal Referee and to reverse the Commission’s findings. It is submitted that any uncertainty was resolved on substantial evidence by the agency whose findings this court dozens of times has insisted would not be disturbed under similar circumstances. This court many times has said that with respect to factual matters, the Industrial Commission’s determination will not be disturbed'unless clearly arbitrary, the function of the Supreme Court being solely to review questions of law and to determine if the Commission lawfully has pursued its ■ authority. It would take a volume to review our pronouncements on this score. • For this court now to assess and weigh the facts and assign its own values to property in direct opposition to those found by the Commission, in a case like this, is to arrogate unto it a power confessedly not possessed and is such a radical departure from our previous expressions as to make us appear ridiculously inconsistent.
In concluding as it has, the main opinion not only reverses its previous pronouce-ments as to power of review, but has laid' down a yardstick.impossible of application because of variables, unpredictables and in-calculables that cannot lend themselves to any degree of-exactitude. Furthermore, it has blinded itself to reality and actuality. It requires little imagination to know that this plaintiff would continue to get his farm income long after the 6]/2 month benefit period had expired, whereas the miner without any farm or other outside income would get nothing. This plaintiff would be dipping into a fund which was created by the industry of himself and fellow miners, while his industry as a farmer, in which he put in about the same amount of time as he did in mining, as is reflected in the record, contributed nothing to that fund. Why should a man in the position of the plaintiff, who obviously has the outside means of at least feeding himself and his family, be given an advantage over him who has no farm to rely upon in periods of adversity? Why should the mining fund support the inde--pendent income of this farmer while his' fellow worker has none to support? It is rib answer to say that the Act should be construed liberally, as the main opinion says' it shoud be, in aid of the more favored-' worker and to the detriment of the less' favored worker. If it is to be construed liberally, the man with the farm should not' benefit more than the less fortunate one without a farm, — and it hardly can be gain-' said in this case that the applicant here' is far better off, particularly when the un-; employment continues than is the worker without an independent source of economic relief.
*123The main opinion also is vulnerable to the criticism that it does not follow the authorities, some of which are strikingly similar.2
McDONOUGH, C. J., concurs in the result reached in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice HENRIOD.

. Aley v. Unemployment Comp. Bd., 178 Pa.Super. 515, 116 A.2d 241; Kapera v. Unemployment Comp. Rev. Bd., 178 Pa.Super. 508, 116 A.2d 239.

. Muchant v. Unemployment Comp. Bd., 175 Pa.Super. 85, 103 A.2d 438; Hatch v. Employment Sec. Agcy., Idaho, 313 P.2d 1067; Phillips v. Michigan Unemp. Comp. Comm., 323 Mich. 188, 35 N.W. 2d 237.