Court Opinion

ID: 9864791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:11:47.982872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:31:54.982629
License: Public Domain

*443Mr. Justice Bouck,
dissenting.
The majority opinion seems to go beyond all bounds of logic and authority.
The Industrial Commission, in disallowing the claim of the alleged employee here, found on apparently sufficient evidence that, according to the true meaning of our Workmen’s Compensation Act, he was not an employee, but an independent contractor, and that he was not injured by an accident arising out of or in the course of his employment. These findings of fact would, under former decisions of this court too numerous to mention, have been considered binding upon the courts. In spite of this, the district court substituted its own conclusions for those of the commission. This, I think, was error. I believe that this court, in sustaining the district court, likewise erred.
Charles J. Moynihan, the alleged employee, is an experienced attorney of over twenty years’ general law practice, whose home and law office are both in Montrose, Colorado. He had represented the Oliver Power Company, of Paonia, Colorado, before the Public Utilities Commission in Denver. The hearing ended August 19, 1931, completing the current work for the company. The following day he left for home. The accident in this case happened at a point near Canon City, where Moynihan expected to spend the night. He was driving an automobile by private arrangement with one Clark, the owner of the car, who was with him in connection with some minor business. They had made the trip to Denver together, and together they were homeward bound, Clark being a resident of Ouray. The car left the road, Clark was killed, and Moynihan suffered serious injuries which form the basis of his claim. At the time of the accident. Moynihan was of course performing no duty connected causally in any way with his employment.
From the professional or any other standpoint, there was nothing peculiar about the arrangement between *444Moynihan and the power company. He received a retainer which gave the client “the right to consult the office [Moynihan had two attorneys hired on salary] as to the going policies of the company in so far as they had to do with legality or legal propriety of some particular business venture or policy of the company.” There was to be a per diem for extra work. Moynihan says “he was to be paid * * * the per diem for all work away from the office, all litigation or appearing before the Public Utilities Commission was to be paid for, conferences in the office pertaining to any of those matters which finally culminated either in lawsuits or trials in Delta County to obtain rights-of-way.” He also testified: “It was finally agreed that I should be paid $50.00 a month until such time as the revenues of the company showed a profit, when we would make another adjustment. ’ ’
No other case of claim for industrial compensation by an attorney in the general practice is cited by counsel or in the majority opinion. This fact is significant. The further facts that Moynihan, who according to his testimony was employed to supply all legal safeguards to the interests of the power company, did not advise the company to report him to the Industrial Commission as one of its employees, and that the company did not do so, imply a fair contemporaneous construction by Moynihan and the company of his real status as not falling within the terms of the Workmen’s Compensation Act.
Hitherto it has seemed the unquestioned principle that certain professional men in the general practice are not within the act. One of these is not like the medical interne of a hospital, who, as Mr. Justice Cardozo (then of the New York Court of Appeals) expressed it in Matter of Bernstein v. Beth Israel Hospital, 236 N. Y. 268, 271, 140 N. E. 694, 695, is “a servant or employee by every test of permanence of duty, of intimacy of contract, and of fullness of subjectionIn the same case Judge Cardozo said: “A distinction is to be drawn * * * between *445the position of a visiting or consulting physician, and that of an interne, who has placed his time and service at the call of a superior. We have drawn a like distinction between attorneys at law retained for a specific service, and those serving a single employer in consideration of a salary (Greenberg v. Remick & Co., 230 N. Y. 70, 75).” And in Matter of Renouf v. N. Y. C. R. R. Co., 254 N. Y. 349, 351, 173 N. E. 218, 219, where the compensation claim of a nurse was rejected, it is said that nurses “are regarded as especially equipped to render professional services to patients when called on to do so rather than as workmen. They are grouped with doctors and lawyers * #
However, even aside from the foregoing- proposition, which places certain professional employment in a category outside the act, injuries suffered on the way to or from work are ordinarily not compensable. Industrial Commission v. Anderson, 69 Colo. 147, 169 Pac. 135. This court has held that only under special circumstances can an exception be made. State Compensation Insurance Fund v. Industrial Commission, 89 Colo. 426, 427, 3 P. (2d) 414; Driscoll Construction Co. v. Industrial Commission, 94 Colo. 568, 31 P. (2d) 491. In both these cases the employee was actively engaged in carrying out express instructions directly connected with his work. All the logic against liability in a case like the present, and particularly the reasoning which gave rise to the rule as to street risks, is in point here.
The foregoing has in part assumed, for the sake of the discussion, that Moynihan was an employee. I think, though, that the Industrial Commission’s conclusion is correct and that he was merely an independent contractor.
It was the right and duty of the Industrial Commission to determine the facts by considering the evidence and drawing any reasonable inference therefrom. This the commission did when it refused to award compensation. Its conclusion should stand. I therefore dissent.