Court Opinion

ID: 9571401
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:31:29.570191+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:24.232597
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting) : Respectfully I dissent.
First: We don’t upset the Commission’s orders unless unsupported by competent, substantial evidence, as has been voiced by this court and the author of the main opinion more than once.1 Stated otherwise, the order of the Commission will be sustained, unless it is shown to be arbitrary and/or capricious, to which the author also has subscribed.2 Also, we review the evidence *279in a light more favorable to the Commission’s conclusion, also endorsed by the author.3
So: What is the evidence here, that looked upon more favorably in support of the Commission’s order, justifies it?
The employees were not required to eat at the cafeteria which, though operated on the premises, had been leased to an entrepreneur, hardly a part of the employer’s industrial plant. Only 1/3 of the employees took advantage of the facility, without employer or economic compulsion.4 Other facilities were available off the premises to which the other ^ did or could have resorted. At noon the employees officially checked out, and checked in after lunch. During the lunch sojourn they were free as the birds. Others than employees could eat at the cafeteria on occasion. No Berlin Wall kept anyone in or out of the cafeteria. The lease agreement obviously contemplated the services of an independent contractor, with rather minor leasehold restrictions. Assuming that the employer had a conditional control over the lessee, this does not point up any control over the employees,- — and herein lies a differential. If the cafe operator had an injury claim based on control of his employer, Sperry, which I think would assume the ridiculous, that is one thing, but to attribute a control over him to Sperry’s employees, none of whom had to enter or even look at the cafeteria at any time by any sort of necessity connected with his job, amounts to a controlled control akin to hearsay upon hearsay.
The circumlocution of the main opinion’s treatment of the evidence most favorable to the applicant to the exclusion of that most favorable to the Commission’s order, is an evasion of the perhaps trite generalizations reflected in the cases cited in the footnotes of this dissent, and presents a situation where this court by a sort of jurisprudential paralysis, talks out of one side of its mouth in January, but by convenient therapy shifts the infirmity to the other side in February.
*280As to Wilson v. Sears, Roebuck & Co.,5 cited in the main opinion: It is no authority here, since this court had no authority to express its opinion as to whether facts presented in a civil suit in the district court were or were not such as to establish the fact of the nature or extent of employment, under our Workmen’s Compensation Act. That question is reserved to the Industrial Commission under statutory interdiction,6 and is no subject for the courts to resolve in the first instance. If this is not so, this writer can contend, — successfully, I think, — that in the future, applicants for compensation under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, need not go through statutory channels, but may shortstop the legislative interdiction by simple resort to the courts for determination of fact situations that until the Sears case were confined to an orderly procedure through the Industrial Commission. Hence, we should admit our mistake in the Sears case and get back on the procedural track, lest the legislative locomotive be derailed. Saying this, I concede my own error in going along with the Sears decision, with only the excuse that in that case, none of the litigants raised the jurisdictional point. This, of course, is no justification for our error.

. Maryland Cas. Co. v. Ind. Comm., 12 Utah 2d 223, 364 P.2d 1020 (1961); Sutton v. Ind. Comm., 9 Utah 2d 339, 344 P.2d 538 (1959); Stroud v. Ind. Comm., 2 Utah 2d 270, 272 P.2d 187 (1954); Crow v. Ind. Comm., 104 Utah 333, 140 P.2d 321, 148 A.L.R. 316 (1943).

. Pintar v. Ind. Comm., 14 Utah 2d 276, 382 P.2d 414 (1963) ; Sizemore v. Ind. Comm., 4 Utah 2d 126, 288 P.2d 788 (1955); Maryland Cas. v. Ind. Comm., supra; Sutton v. Ind. Comm., 9 Utah 2d 339, 344 P.2d 538 (1959); Jones v. California Pkg. Co., 121 Utah 612, 244 P.2d 640 (1952); Long v. Western States Ref., 14 Utah 2d 398, 384 P.2d 1015 (1963).

. Nicholson v. Ind. Comm., 15 Utah 2d 176, 389 P.2d 730 (1964); Jones v. California Pkg., supra; Long v. Western States Ref., supra; Sutton v. Ind. Comm., supra.

. Nat. Surety Corp. v. Bellah, 5 Cir., 245 F.2d 936 (1957), cited and heavily relied upon in the main opinion. A casual reading thereof will reflect that the case is inapropos here, because it indicates that the short 30 minutes lunch hour, coupled with inappropriate facilities outside the plant, made it impossible to eat anywhere save on the company’s property, which economic factor forced the employees to patronize the company-sponsored cafe, bring their own lunch or starve at high noon. Furthermore, that case was a federal intermediate court to which this court ascribes proper respect but no authority compulsive in our conclusions.

. 14 Utah 2d 360, 384 P.2d 400 (1963).

. 35-1-85, U.C.A.1953 and annotations, thereunder.