Court Opinion

ID: 9829427
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:18:22.815498+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:01.140034
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
We have given careful and studious consideration of the able and exhaustive argument presented by counsel for appellees in their motion for rehearing and the decisions there cited and the facts chiefly relied on to distinguish this case from the Lehr Case (Dave Lehr, Inc. v. Brown), 91 S.W.(2d) 693, 694 (Tex.Com.App.), and other decisions cited in our original opinion, and which it is insisted bring this case within the rule announced in decisions relied on by appellees here, and particularly the opinions of Justice Speer of the Commission of Appeals in Texas Employers’ Insurance Association v. Owen, 298 S.W. 542, and the opinion of Judge Powell in King v. Galloway (Tex.Com.App.) 284 S.W. 942. The facts stressed here are that Jones was told by Bendorf, who employed him, to haul pipe, when and where he was to get it, how to load it, the road to travel, where he was to carry it, to .whom he was to deliver it and when he was to return for another load.
We believe that those instructions were merely incidental to the company’s contract of employment and not sufficient to fix the legal status of Jones as an employee or servant rather than as independent contractor. While similar facts were recited in the two decisions last referred to, yet there were also other pertinent facts, and from all such facts taken as a whole, the conclusion was reached that the persons employed were not independent contractors, but employees within the meaning of the Workmen’s Compensation Law. Those decisions and all others relied on by appellees recognize the tests for determining the issue announced in all the cases and. the favored one is quoted by Judge Speer in the Owen Case from the opinion of Judge German (Tex.Com.App.) in Shannon v. Western Indemnity Company, 257 S.W. 522, which, as said in the Lehr opinion “has been many times cited by our courts and the courts of other jurisdictions.” Other tests of like import are quoted in our original opinion.
With those tests as our guide, we are unable to escape the conclusion reached on original hearing that plaintiffs failed to discharge their burden of proving that at the time of his death Eugene Jones was an employee of the Indemnity Supply Company; to the contrary, we believe the evidence shows conclusively that he was an independent contractor. .
The motion for rehearing is overruled.