Court Opinion

ID: 9587995
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:28:41.629259+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:10.658578
License: Public Domain

*261Justice Meyer
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent. The majority pays only lip service to the well established rule that this Court’s review is limited on appeal to the question of whether the findings and conclusions are supported by competent evidence. This is not a case where the only evidence supports one result, and, where, if that evidence is disbelieved, we are left with a record devoid of any competent evidence to support the findings and conclusions. See, for example, Taylor v. Cone Mills Corporation, --- N.C. ---, --- S.E. 2d --- (filed this date). I cannot agree with the majority that there is no real conflict in the evidence. There is. The witness Rollins testified:
I would ordinarily take out the culls and the dump pads with the forklift. I would take out the culls that Pee Wee was stacking there. He stacked culls right outside the building. There was not really any limit as to how many culls he could stack out there before I moved the culls.
On this particular night when I went to see John Shaw, I let Pee Wee borrow my forklift to take out the culls he had stacked. He didn’t have no more place to put them. In answer to your question where were they stacked, like a box. He’d band them up, like a box, like you stack them culls in there and you band them up. The box was full (Emphasis added.)
That the Commission may believe all, part of or none of what a witness says is such elementary law that no citation of authority is required. I find ample evidence to support the Deputy Commissioner’s Award denying benefits which was adopted by the Full Commission and affirmed by the Court of Appeals. It is our duty to determine whether the findings and conclusions are sup-' ported by the record evidence before us —it is not our duty to assume the role of super fact-finder.
I am greatly concerned that the majority opinion has established the rule that no direct, specific order of prohibition by an authorized supervisor is effective unless that order is given immediately prior to an accident by the authorized supervisor who is present at the time of the accident. It requires little familiarity with present day industrial practices to know that it is totally impractical to have a supervisor present at all times. *262Likewise, common sense dictates that an employee will seldom defy a direct order in the presence of the authorized supervisor who gave that order and accompanied it with a threat of termination of employment. It is far more likely to occur when the supervisor is not present. Here, the employer’s authorized supervisors twice warned the employee not to use dangerous equipment for which he was not trained. These orders were presumably given for the benefit of the employee and his fellow employees and not solely for the benefit of the employer.
While the result in this case does not shock the conscience, the rule established here is likewise applicable to situations which would pose even greater danger to fellow employees and the public generally. I seriously question whether the result would have been the same had this employee been handling extremely toxic chemical wastes rather than bricks, or that the same result would have obtained had the equipment been a large overhead crane in a crowded industrial plant, or sensitive safety-related equipment in a nuclear-powered electric generation station. The principle is the same. The employer is usually in a better position than the employee to assess the danger of the use of dangerous equipment by untrained personnel to the employee, his fellow employees, and the public in general.
I do not believe that it is in the best interest of the employee, and certainly not the employer, that we leave employers with only the sanction of discharging or disciplining employees who defy direct orders given in the interest of plant safety. While the deterrent effect of loss of benefits might be questionable, we should not simply cast that benefit aside.
If the employee’s activity in defying the employer’s prohibition against his operation of dangerous equipment leaves him within the course and scope of his employment, the employer has in a real sense and in a substantial way lost the ability to protect his employees and others from the danger of, and himself from liability for such activity. I fear that the majority has placed far too much emphasis on the proposition that, even in defying repeated specific instructions, the employee here was still acting in furtherance of the employer’s business. In my view, the fact that the employee is still acting in furtherance of his employer’s business should not be the controlling factor. Certainly in the case *263before us, and in virtually all cases, the employer would much prefer that the employee obey the supervisor’s prohibitory orders than to receive such benefit as might grow out of the violation of those orders.
Unlike the majority, I do not consider this a case of enforcing an employer’s rules or orders or doing indirectly what the employer failed to do directly. Nor is it a case where the employer failed to take adequate measures after discovery of the violation of his orders. The evidence here is clear that neither supervisor who ordered the employee not to drive the forklift was aware that the other had done so and therefore the employer could have had no way of knowing that the employee’s violations were repeated.
I would vote to affirm the Court of Appeals.
Justices COPELAND and Carlton join this dissenting opinion.