Court Opinion

ID: 9885604
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 13:08:01.382614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:55.324311
License: Public Domain

Conway, J.
(dissenting). We think that the award was properly made and that the case of Matter of Gottshall v. United Utilities & Specialty Co. (275 App. Div. 736, motion for leave to appeal denied 300 N. Y. 761) is analogous. The Appellate Division gave four reasons for finding that Glickman’s death was in the course of his employment as follows: “ (a) he was an outside worker, not employed in any one fixed place and had left his residence, even though it was a distant and not fully continuous residence, for the area of employment; (b) the employer had knowledge it was the practice of decedent to spend summer week ends at his place in Woodridge; (c) when the business of the employer required it, decedent worked and could be called on to work Sundays and week ends; (d) the presumptions of the statute add strength to the claim.” (280 App. Div. 1006.)
There cannot be any question but that there is ample factual support in the record for reasons (a), (b) and (c). There can be no question but that had Glickman been on his way from his home which appears to have been on Anthony Avenue in the borough of the Bronx and had been killed under the same circumstances, his widow would properly have received a compensation award. The deceased was not on a week-end trip as the term is customarily used. He had taken a residence for the summer for his wife and child at Woodridge, New York, in the Catskills. His wife had rented a room and had a separate kitchen downstairs where she was permitted to do the cooking for herself, the child and her husband. Her husband, the child and she took up their residence there about June 19th for the summer and the wife was living there on August 16th when her husband was killed. August 16th was a Monday. The decedent was on his way to the Bronx to work on his cases. The employer knew that the decedent had taken the family residence for the summer in Woodridge. In fact the employer knew that the decedent left earlier than usual on Friday nights to return on Monday mornings. The widow testified that during the preced*437ing week end he had worked on office papers which he had brought with him and that they had paid a visit to a friend of her husband in a similar line of work where business matters were discussed.
We repeat that had the decedent been on his way from his home in the Bronx to interview witnesses and had been killed in an automobile collision, there would be no question as to an award. Why should it make any difference that he was returning from his summer home to do the same thing when his employer permitted it and allowed him to leave early Friday afternoons in order to visit his summer home? Would it make any difference if he had taken a summer home in Westchester County, for instance, where he would have been able to go home in his automobile every night? Is it a question of mileage? Is an accident compensable because a man takes a summer home or residence thirty miles away but not if he takes one seventy-five miles away? For an outside worker to be covered by a compensation policy must he keep his family in the city all summer? Or must he keep his family during the summer at so short a distance from his work that he can go to see them every night? We must remember that this man worked for an insurance company which knew he was an outside worker, knew that he was entitled to compensation if he was injured on his way to work, knew that he had a summer home for his wife and child and knew that he had to go from there to his work. His employer which permitted the decedent to do these things, which were for the employer’s benefit, comes into court in an unenviable position when it urges that it should not pay compensation here when the decedent acted with his employer’s consent in everything he did and the employer benefited from the doing of it.
Lewis, Oh. J., Desmond and Fboessel, JJ., concur with Fuld, J.; Conway, J., dissents in opinion in which Dye, J., concurs.
Order reversed, etc.