Court Opinion

ID: 9856814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:58:55.274259+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:40:40.259323
License: Public Domain

Frankum, Judge, dissenting.
To my mind the judgment of the majority in this case carries to its ultimate limits the positional risk theory in determining compensability; it places undue emphasis on that facet of the Workmen’s Compensation Act relating to an injury arising in the course of the employment, and virtually ignores the additional requirement that the injury must also arise out of the employment before it is compensable. There must be some causal connection between the employment and the injury. The mere fact that an employee is injured while on the job is not enough. “An accident arises 'out of’ the employment when it arises because of it, as when the employment is a contributing proximate cause.” New Amsterdam Cas. Co. v. Sumrell, 30 Ga. App. 682 (2a) (118 SE 786). “And the burden is on the claimant to prove that the injury for which compensation is sought arose out of and in the course of the employment, before compensation can be legally awarded to the claimant.” Hughes v. Hartford Acc. &c. Co., 76 Ga. App. 785, 789 (47 SE2d 143). As was said in Hartford Acc. & Ind. Co. v. Zachery, 69 Ga. App. 250 (1) (25 SE2d 135): “Under the Workmen’s Compensation Act an injury ' “arises out of” the employment, when there is apparent to the rational mind, upon consideration of all the circumstances, a causal connection between the conditions under which the work is required to be performed and the resulting injury. Under this test, if the injury can be seen to have followed as a natural incident of the work, and to have been contemplated by a reasonable person familiar with the whole situation as a result of the exposure occasioned by the nature of the employment, then it arises “out of” the employment. But it excludes an injury which can not *5fairly be traced to the employment as a contributing proximate cause, and which comes from a hazard to which the workmen would have been equally exposed apart from the employment. The causative danger must be peculiar to the work. . . It must be incidental to the character of the business, and not independent of the relation of master and servant.’ New Amsterdam Casualty Co. v. Sumrell, 30 Ga. App. 682, 688 (118 SE 786); Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. v. Neal, 55 Ga. App. 790, 800 (191 SE 393).”
Applying -this test to the facts in this case I think that the evidence here demanded a finding that the claimant’s injury arose, not out of his employment, but as the result of a personal feud and conflict between him and Kensey. It is true that in a manner of speaking the conflict had its inception in a dispute over working conditions. But that dispute had ended, and the claimant’s injury was caused directly and proximately by the malice harbored in Kensey’s breast toward the claimant personally because of the defeat which the claimant had inflicted upon him in the combat. While the Workmen’s Compensation Act makes the employer an insurer of the employee’s safety with respect to injuries arising out of the employment while the employee is in the course of his employment, it does not make the employer an absolute insurer of the employee’s safety in all events. Carroll v. Hartford Acc. & Ind. Co., 73 Ga. App. 799, 802 (38 SE2d 185). In my opinion, the facts of this case are indistinguishable from the cases of Hightower v. U. S. Cas. Co., 30 Ga. App. 123 (117 SE 98), and Hughes v. Hartford Acc. &c. Co., 76 Ga. App. 785, supra. I recognize, of course, that in those cases the decisions were predicated upon the proposition that the finding by the board was authorized by the evidence. I cannot, of course, speculate as to what the ruling of the court would have been in those cases had the finding by the board been contrary to what it was, but in this case I am satisfied that the evidence was not sufficient to authorize the finding made, and in fact demanded a finding that the claimant’s injury did not arise out of his employment.
I am of the opinion that this case falls squarely within the exclusion contained in Code Ann. § 114-102 which bars compen*6sation for an injury caused by the wilful act of a third person directed against an employee for reasons personal to such employee.
For these reasons I must dissent from the ruling and judgment of the majority. I am authorized to say that Bell, P. J., Eberhardt and Pannell, JJ., concur in this dissent.