Court Opinion

ID: 9568872
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:08:11.965875+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:11:14.537911
License: Public Domain

DENECKE, J.,
dissenting.
The majority holds that the decedent, a truck driver on the defendant’s premises, who volunteered to assist defendant’s lift truck operator in loading the truck was in joint supervision and control of the premises and was not engaged in a pickup or delivery.
This is one of the most uncertain areas of Oregon law. The majority decision does bring certainty to this uncertain area. However, I cannot join such a decision because in my opinion certainty is achieved by reading any meaning out of the pickup or delivery amendment.
As we indicated in Boling v. Nork, 232 Or 461, 375 P2d 548 (1962), the legislative history of the pickup or delivery amendment indicates that the legislative committee intended to overrule Atkinson v. Fairview Dairy Farms, 190 Or 1, 222 P2d 732 (1950). The rationale of the Atkinson ease was stated to be:
“It seems to us that the Inwall case, supra, is decisive of the case at bar for, under the facts in the instant case, the plaintiff, driver of the co-op, *141participated in many more activities in the processing of the milk than did Inwall in the loading of the lumber onto the vessel. As plaintiff’s own witness said, there was ‘general cooperation to get them (the cans) in the lineup to the scales.’ ” 190 Or at 10.
After the pickup or delivery amendment we continued to decide that when pickup or delivery involved significant physical intermingling and cooperative effort between the driver and the employees of the shipper or receiver, it was not a pickup or delivery within the meaning of the amendment and, therefore, the injured workman was barred from bringing a third-party action because he and the shipping or receiving employer were in joint supervision and control of the premises where the injury occurred. That is the rationale of the majority opinion in this case.
"When I initially considered this case I was of the opinion that it could be distinguished from the logging cases and Hadeed v. Wil. Hi-Grade Concrete Co., 238 Or 513, 395 P2d 553 (1964). The logging cases appeared to emphasize that in ordinary parlance the loading and unloading of logs are not referred to as a pickup or delivery. Also, this operation required close cooperation between the two sets of employees and their machines. In the Hadeed case close cooperation between the driver and the hod carrier was essential to efficiency. In the instant ease the loading of lumber for shipment can be appropriately described as a “pickup”; cooperation between the driver and the loader was not essential or even contemplated. The lumber was being shipped pursuant to a tariff which provided that the shipper had the cost and responsibility for the loading. The driver could have left the premises while the lumber was being loaded.
*142After more consideration I concluded that while such distinctions could reasonably be made, a decision on such basis would only further complicate an already confused area. I finally determined that the only solution which would give the pickup or delivery amendment any viability and which would create some certainty is to overrule our prior pickup or delivery decisions and hold that any operation which reasonably could be termed a pickup or delivery would be'so regarded under the statute regardless of the degree of cooperation and intermingling among the employees.
The pickup or delivery amendment must have been enacted to end the confusion in at least one area-in which there was an intermingling and cooperative effort among the employees of several employers. Prior to the amendment, if there was an intermingling and joint effort, whether it was in a pickup or delivery situation or in some other situation, we held that the employees of the several employers had joint supervision and control over the premises. If there was no intermingling and cooperative, effort, whether in a pickup or delivery situation or otherwise, there was no joint supervision and control.
When the legislature amended the statute and provided that no person engaged in a pickup or delivery would be deemed to have joint supervision and control over the premises of another employer, it seems most likely that their intention was to provide that when there was a pickup or delivery the driver would not be deemed to have joint supervision and control over the premises regardless of the fact that the driver and the third-party employees intermingled and cooperated in the pickup or delivery. When we continue to hold that a driver making a pickup or delivery who intermingled with the third-party employer’s :em*143ployees and cooperated with them did have joint supervision and control, the pickup or delivery amendment has no effect.
The majority bases its interpretation upon the Senate committee’s deletion from the bill of the phrase, “engaged in work' incidental to such pickup or delivery.” The majority states that the only purpose of such deletion was to narrow the meaning of “pickup or delivery.” That is not stated in the committee minutes and no inference can be made from such minutes that those favoring deletion intended that “pickup or delivery” should be narrowed to the confines stated by the majority. The minutes state that the principal sponsor, at the first objection to the phrase, conceded that the phrase could be stricken. The Senator who was the leading exponent of the amendment in its original form seconded the deletion and carried the amendment in its deleted form on the floor. Prom this it appears that the sponsors were of the opinion that the amendment in its deleted form had the effect of overruling Atkinson v. Fairview Dairy Farms, supra (190 Or 1).
A logical reason for deleting the phrase is that it is much more encompassing than the phrase “pickup or delivery.” The majority apparently believes that the phrase was deleted so that a driver placing 2 x 4’s to assist in the placing of a load upon his truck would not be considered engaging in a “pickup” because he would only be doing work incidental to a pickup. The advocates of deletion may just as reasonably have believed that such phrase was intended to include employees of a subcontractor on a construction job who were assembling equipment at a place on the job to facilitate the future pickup of the equipment and the *144committee members did not desire to include such employees.
The other reason stated by the majority for its decision is that the legislature has met in three biennial sessions since Boling v. Nork, supra (232 Or 461), and has made no change in the statute. One reasonable explanation for such inaction is that the legislature might not have anticipated that the decedent’s conduct in this case consisting of volunteering Ms services to place crosspieces and directing the placing of bundles would be held comparable to the conduct in Boling v. Nork, supra (232 Or 461), and would likewise bar recovery.
Sloan, J., joins in this dissent.