Court Opinion

ID: 9669956
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:11:35.59413+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:01.060691
License: Public Domain

Peterson, Justice
(dissenting).
Relator’s husband, Michael H. Carey, died in a brave act of selfless service to a fellow man. The majority opinion — contrary to the unanimous finding and determination of the Workmen’s Compensation Commission — would treat that act merely as a self-serving act by a salesman for his employer, Moorman Manufacturing Company.1 Although the motivation for this unprecedented decision is generous, I am compelled to dissent. I would affirm the commission with respect to all issues raised in these proceedings.
The majority opinion adopts the thesis advanced by relator but rejected by the commission: that Carey would be a more suc*97cessful salesman of his employer’s farm feeds if he used the sales “technique” of being friendly and being of service to customers and potential customers. To be sure, the employer had encouraged decedent to take the Dale Carnegie course on “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and had given him an Earl Nightingale motivational recording, “Success ... & You.” One side of the Nightingale record was a general inspirational message that successful people cultivated good attitudes, set for themselves worthy goals, and persisted in the pursuit of those goals. The other side of the record was simply a suggested “track” for making effective sales presentations of Moorman products. Neither Carnegie nor Nightingale would suggest that these principles or techniques were of their invention.
The application of these principles in the context in which they were given and applied is not unique: to increase the employee’s commission earnings and the employer’s profits by achieving more sales to farmers in the market for feed. Six of decedent’s customers testified to various helpful acts he had performed for them in the course of making sales: helping put up a drill press; helping fix a corn picker; helping dehorn calves; starting a snowmobile; giving a set of punch tools to a customer; helping roll up some fence wire; helping unload hay; helping stack bales of hay; helping fix a baler; helping plan a hog set-up; helping determine a disease in some hogs; helping to pen some sows; delivering small loads of feed. The primary purpose was to ingratiate and to be rewarded with a sale. As one farmer-customer testified:
“* * * jje came ou-(; an(j tried to help you out in trying to sell the feed, you know, he was out to sell the feed, but still at the same time tried to help you out.”
Or, as another farmer-customer testified:
“Well, he wasn’t a high-pressured salesman. He’d come in and talk with you first or help with whatever I was doing and at that time he started selling feed.”
*98This technique was, without doubt, recommended by his district sales manager “[a]s long as it didn’t occupy too much of [his] time.”
It is clear, however, that the employer did not give its salesmen a roving commission, as part of their employment, to render “favors” to persons who were not in the market for feeds or, indeed, to persons outside their prescribed territory. The district manager testified that decedent was not authorized to make commission sales to persons outside his territory except upon authorization of both the sales manager and the salesman in such other territory. To be sure, decedent had stopped for coffee at a highway coffee shop just outside his territory and presumably frequented by farmers residing within his territory. The important fact, however, is that the man to whom he rendered rescue service was a total stranger and a nonfarmer who was neither a regular customer nor a sales prospect.
Decision, in any event, is controlled by our decision in Weidenbach v. Miller, 237 Minn. 278, 55 N. W. 2d 289 (1952). The employee there was a pop and beer driver-salesman who, while driving along the shore of Lake Minnetonka in the company of his employer, went to the rescue of a stranger who had broken through the ice of the lake. The employee drowned in an unsuccessful rescue attempt. We affirmed the Industrial Commission’s finding and determination that the employee’s death did not occur in the scope of his employment. A minority of the Weidenbach court would have reversed the commission’s decision only because the employer had personally directed and participated in the rescue effort, expressly extending the normal scope of the employment. Otherwise, as noted by Mr. Justice Knutson, writing for the majority, if the employee had “been riding alone when he went to the assistance of the third person, we would have no difficulty in holding that his death did not arise ‘out of’ his employment” (237 Minn. 291, 55 N. W. 2d 296).
The commission in this case, adverting to that distinction in the Weidenbach case, said:
*99“* * * The decedent in the instant case had no instructions from the employer to render assistance to persons in peril. The evidence as a whole regarding decedent’s sales training shows that it was sales oriented and we do not believe it can be reasonably inferred that by virtue of decedent’s sales training that he was to render assistance in all situations to the general public. In our opinion, the circumstances in the case do not show that decedent’s bold and courageous act of going down into the hole was incidental to his employment or that it could have been reasonably contemplated he would have so exposed himself to the risk of so doing as an incident to his employment. We hold that his death did not arise out of and in the course of his employment with Moorman.”

 I concur in the court’s opinion that decedent was an employee of Moorman Manufacturing Company and of no other party to the proceedings.