Court Opinion

ID: 9851829
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:20:19.531585+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:16.160335
License: Public Domain

ON DENIAL OF PETITION FOR REHEARING
BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
In his petition for rehearing and supporting brief, counsel for the claimant-appellant (hereinafter counsel) gave the majority ample reason to correct the mistakes which mar the Court’s opinion. The record clearly reveals the Industrial Commission’s confusion with the underlying facts. Repeatedly it refers to Mr. Burl Lange and Burl Lange, Inc. as if they were but a single entity — which they were not: the distinction is more than academic. While, as the Commission found, Mr. Lange, the •individual, or the president, may not have authorized the sale of the company’s batteries to finance the party, corporate main*173tenance foreman Robert Hendren did. Mr. Lange conceded that Hendren, an employee of and agent for the corporation, possessed authority to dispose of the batteries, and to make expenditures for the corporation.
It also may be true that Mr. Lange, in whatever capacity, did not expressly authorize the party. However, Hendren and other employees did so and arranged for it to take place on company premises and during company time. A similar party had taken place the preceding year. Mr. Lange acquiesced in all of this by permitting the event, and thereafter attending it. As counsel aptly asks, “Does Lee Iacocca have to approve of and attend a Chrysler Corporation Christmas party for it to be a company sponsored party?” The reality is that the company Lange, if not the person Lange, sponsored the ill-fated event. The Commission may be due some deference in its findings of fact, but this deference should not extend to this Court attaching itself to findings made in disregard of the corporate agency.
As I had done in my dissenting opinion, counsel correctly point out that the Commission made these muddled findings and its errant decision without the benefit of Grant v. Brownfield’s. There we determined what “work connection” between a Christmas party and an employee’s employment and subsequent death was necessary to determine whether the death arose out of and occurred during the course of employment. Despite its reliance on a Massachusetts case which this Court cited in Grant, the findings of the Commission fell far short of developing the facts sufficient under the test set out in Grant to substantiate a finding that the incident was outside the course and scope of employment. The majority opinion’s assertion that Grant was “easily distinguishable” was premature at best. A proper disposition of this case would be to remand to the Commission for reconsideration in light of Grant, and let it be the first to make the findings.
Such a procedure would allow the Commission to further examine the employer’s sponsoring and financing of the party. The Commission also could further explore the company encouragement of attendance at the party and the employees’ regard of the party as an employment benefit or obligation to which they were entitled or required, and whether the employer might expect to benefit from an event which provided the opportunity to make speeches and give awards — all of which would presumably be expected to foster better employee relations. The record contains enough information on these factors — for example, the fact that the employees used the event to present corporate president Lange and his wife with gifts — to demonstrate that at the least further factual development is called for.
Finally, counsel points out the ordinary rule that worker’s compensation laws be construed liberally in favor of the claimant. By inventing a rule new to worker’s compensation cases that “the facts and all inferences therefrom must be viewed favorably to the party who prevailed below,” the majority risks thwarting the benefit of doubt due this claimant and all claimants. The Commission’s findings of fact are to be upheld so long (but only so long) as they are supported by substantial competent evidence. This Court owes claimants at the least a fair and full examination of the evidence presented to the Commission.
This case affords the perfect example of an important case where a rehearing should not be perfunctorily denied. The Commission materially misconceived the facts related to the nature of the fateful party, and the majority issuing the Court’s opinion perpetuates the misconception notwithstanding that there is good reason to believe that a just determination of this claim has yet to made.