Court Opinion

ID: 9833852
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:05:40.104272+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:07.768733
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
Appellee argues on rehearing against appellant’s petition and in support of its plea in abatement, that “no court in this state has allowed .such a cause of action, although many courts, at many times, have denied such a cause of action.” The Middleton case cited in the original opinion answers the first point of this argument. The answer to the second point is that ap-pellee has cited no case which denies appellant’s cause of action. Indemnity Ins. Co. v. Hare, 107 S.W.2d 739, by this court, is not in point on its facts nor on its law; in that case we said that our Workmen’s Compensation Act, Vernon’s Ann.Civ.St. art. 8306 et seq., destroys the employee’s right of action against his employer, “when applicable”; in the case at bar it is not applicable.
But appellee says that the Middleton case on the point cited is dictum. A careful reading of the case discloses that the great judge who wrote the opinion did not write this particular proposition of law as dictum, but as stating a basic principle in the construction of our Workmen’s Compensation Act. He recognized a broad principle, “so generally accepted and of such fundamental character,” that it now constitutes a maxim of modern civilization — that an employer cannot correct and punish with whips the mistakes of his employees committed in the course of their employment, and protect himself against civil liability for the results of his assaults under the coverage of our Workmen’s Compensation Act. In the Middleton case, Judge Phillips took that theory of the law out of our Workmen’s Compensation Act, and this court will not put it back.
We did not hold in our original opinion, as appellee asserts in its tenth assignment of error on rehearing, “that an employer may not validly insure himself against civil responsibility for the result of an assault which was inflicted by a co-employee.”All the authorities give the employer the right to insure himself against civil responsibility for the results of assaults committed by co-employees; appellant’s cause of action was for an intentional, willful, and malicious assault committed under the-direction and at the command of the employer himself.
We agree with appellee’s contention that “if an employee is injured while in the course of his employment by an unprovoked, assault on his person inflicted by a co-employee, the employee is entitled to compensation under .the Texas Workmen’s Compensation Act.” But the proposition is not in point on the facts of this case.
The motion for rehearing is in all things-overruled.