Court Opinion

ID: 9575176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:12:17.051282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:54.353964
License: Public Domain

WREN, Judge
(dissenting).
I do not agree. The Goodyear rule, in my opinion, does not per se reach the ultimate issue involved here. The difficulty lies not with an abstract statement of the rule, but with its application to the facts. The majority opinion ignores a long line of cases showing a fairly consistent and clear line of demarcation between doing a permitted act of employment carelessly and being in a place where the employee has been expressly forbidden by his employer to be. The situation here cannot be likened to an injury resulting from failure to observe safety rules in wearing gloves, steel-capped shoes or goggles while handling the ice. The employee had put himself in an area where his employment was not to take place at all. He was not engaged in the performance of any act for his employer while riding the conveyor belt. His purpose in crossing to the other side of the belt was to continue working with the ice, but he could only handle the ice after getting there, and he had taken the forbidden route for his own convenience and not that of his employer.
While riding the conveyor belt he was at a “prohibited place”, and was not merely doing a prescribed task in a proscribed manner. A distinction between place and act of employment was clearly drawn in Thomas v. Industrial Commission, 54 Ariz. 420, 96 P.2d 407 (1939), when an employee was injured while making a business related trip in violation of his supervisor’s orders. The Court there approved the view that where an employee is in a place he is excluded from by direct and positive instructions of his employer, he acts outside the sphere of his employment.
Furthermore, Thomas quoted extensively from In re Fournier’s Case, 120 Me. 236, 113 A. 270 (1921), which reviewed the cases distinguishing the “forbidden place” or the “forbidden route” from the performance of employment duties. In Fournier’s Case an' employee was engaged in sorting bales of cotton and hoisting them from the basement upstairs through a trapdoor by means of a rope running over a pulley and attached to an engine. He was injured while going upstairs by means of the rope. It was held that, even though he was going to the upper floor to attend to matters for the employer, he was not injured in an accident arising out of and in the course of the employment within the Workmen’s Compensation Act, where there was a stairway provided for employees going upstairs, and there was a rule which the employee had knowledge of, that no man should go up the rope.
The Court reasoned:
“He was as much in a forbidden place where he could not reasonably be, when he was dangling at the end of a swinging rope between the floors of the building where he was working, as he would have been had he, in order to save time in going to some part of his employer’s premises where his next duties were to *366be performed, passed through a tranformer chamber full of high-tension wires, which he was forbidden to enter. He took the forbidden course for his own convenience, and not that of the [employer],
“If, then, the employees is in a place where he is prohibited from being by positive orders of his employer by reason of the danger, or has taken a certain course in going from one place to another which he is prohibited from taking by his employer for the same reason, notwithstanding it is within the period of his employment, and his purpose in going to the other place is to perform some of his duties he is engaged to perform, he cannot be said, while in the forbidden place or while going by the forbidden route or means, to be acting in the course of his employment within the meaning of the Compensation Act, because he is not in a place where he reasonably may be in the performance of any of his duties.” (Citations omitted). 120 Me. at 240-241, 113 A. at 272.
In Hibberd v. Hughey, 110 Neb. 744, 194 N.W. 859 (1923), the employee was directed not to get onto an elevator at the time he was told to lower it to floor level. The Court concluded that where the employee violates instructions as to the place in which he is to perform his labor he thereby removes himself from the sphere of his employment, and set aside compensation that had been allowed by the Commission.
More recently in Buehner v. Hauptly, 161 N.W.2d 170 (Iowa 1968), a carpenter, employed in the construction of a grain elevator, was repeatedly instructed not to ride hoists used to haul material and tools from the ground to the work level. He was fatally injured while using the hoist to descend from the top of the elevator. The Court held that he was at a prohibited place, that is, on the hoist, and that therefore the fatal injury did not arise out of and in the course of his employment.
The argument in Buehner that decedent was on the platform where he had a right to be, and was merely getting to the ground in a way which was against regulations, was rejected in favor of the argument that the “place” which was important was not the platform but the hoist. That is where the decedent was and that is where he was forbidden to be. The Court further rejected the assertion that once decedent had rightfully established himself on the elevator platform any means of descent could be nothing more than negligence in the performance of a service required by, or incidental to, his employment.
I appreciate that in our consideration.of this question the Court is bound to construe the ,evidence as favorably as it reasonably may be construed to sustain the award. Thomas, supra. However, to me, the evidence is clear that the employee acted outside the sphere of his employment. The decision of this Court makes “[t]he employee, rather than the employer, the manager of the business, with no power in the latter to protect himself from liability or loss.” Id., 54 Ariz. at 430, 96 P.2d at 411.
I respectfully dissent.