Court Opinion

ID: 9765754
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:18:19.4658+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:15.509928
License: Public Domain

STEAKLEY, Justice.
This is a workmen’s compensation case. The question is whether the Respondent, Dossey, who was injured in New Mexico, is entitled to compensation under the Texas Workmen’s Compensation Law, Article 8306 et seq.1 The trial court held that he was and on the basis of jury findings entered judgment for Dossey for total and permanent disability. The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed. 387 S.W.2d 758. We reverse the judgments below and remand the case.
Dossey is a resident of Texas and was residing at Andrews, Texas, at the time of his injury. Andrews is thirty-two miles from the Texas-New Mexico boundary. Dossey is an oil field worker. In January of 1962 he and a friend heard that Lowe Drilling Company was looking for a crew with which to start a drilling operation. Lowe Drilling Company had its principal office in Midland, Texas, and operated rigs in the West Texas-New Mexico oil field. Henry Ellis Williams was Lowe’s tool-pusher with the duty of employing the crew. Dossey and his friend sought out Williams a few miles from Andrews on an oil field road and asked for work. In the informal manner of doing such things in the oil business, Williams said he would hire them and that they should stand by until further notice. Dossey was subsequently called by Williams and told to report for work the following morning. He did so and was then told that he would first go to work on a rig in New Mexico. He worked at the New Mexico location for four weeks until the well was completed. The crew, including Dossey, was then sent to a location near Andrews, Texas, where they worked three days laying water and gas lines to a Lowe Drilling Company rig. The crew was then sent to another location in New Mexico where Dossey suffered his injury ten days later.
The evidence as to the terms of the contract of employment, particularly the testimony of Dossey and Williams, is inconclusive. There is evidence from their testimony that Dossey was hired to work in both Texas and New Mexico as the cir*155cumstances of his employer might require. Williams, for example, testified that at the time of his employment of Dossey he did not know where Dossey would be working; that it would be in one of the two states of Texas or New Mexico, depending upon where the rig to which they would be assigned would be “fired up”; that it was his understanding that Dossey would be “working in Texas and New Mexico or in either state,” depending upon where the work took him; and that it was “just a matter of happenstance that the rig fired up in New Mexico first.” In any event, it was stipulated that the contract of hire remained unchanged during Dossey’s employment by Lowe Drilling Company.
Petitioner’s points of error assert, in essence, two propositions: first, that the undisputed proof established conclusively that at the time of his injury Dossey occupied the status of a New Mexico — and not a Texas — employee; and, second, that the trial court erred in not submitting to the jury its requested issue inquiring whether Dossey occupied the status of a Texas employee at the time of his injury. We overrule the first and sustain the second of these contentions.
The extraterritorial provisions of the Texas Workmen’s Compensation Law, Article 8306, Sec. 19, provide:
“If an employee, who has been hired in this State, sustain injury in the course of his employment he shall be entitled to compensation according to the Law of this State even though such injury was received outside of the State, and that such employee, though injured out of the State of Texas, shall be entitled to the same rights and remedies as if injured within the State of Texas. * * *
“Providing that such injury shall have occurred within one year from the date such injured employee leaves this State; and provided, further, that no recovery can be had by the injured employee hereunder in the event he has elected to pursue his remedy and recovers in the state where such injury occurred.” 2
The construction of these statutory provisions by this Court is found in the following cases: Texas Employers’ Ins. Ass’n v. Volek, 69 S.W.2d 33 (Tex.Com.App.1934); Maryland Casualty Co. v. Brown, 131 Tex. 404, 115 S.W.2d 394 (1938); Texas Employers’ Ins. Ass’n v. James, 131 Tex. 605, 118 S.W.2d 293 (1938); Travelers Ins. Co. v. Cason, 132 Tex. 393, 124 S.W.2d 321 (1939); Fidelity & Casualty Co. v. McLaughlin, 134 Tex. 613, 135 S.W.2d 955 (1940); Southern Underwriters v. Gallagher, 135 Tex. 41, 136 S.W.2d 950 (1940); and Hale v. Texas Employers’ Ins. Ass’n, 150 Tex. 215, 239 S.W.2d 608 (1951). The exhaustive review of these cases in Hale will not be here repeated. We said in Hale:
“All of those decisions seem to be in accord on the point that the employee, to be entitled to the benefit of the extraterritorial provision of the statute, must have acquired the status of a Texas employee. This because the entire statute is intended for the benefit of Texas employees and because industry in Texas should not have the burden of providing insurance for employees of other states. * * *
“From the language of the statute and from the decisions discussed, we are led to the conclusion that the phrase ‘status of a Texas employee’ is not used in a narrow or technical sense, but rather is intended to include those who have a status of Texas employees or workmen in the ordinary sense of the words.”
An employee has the status of a Texas employee when he has been hired in this state to work in this state and in another state as the circumstances of his employer may require. His Texas employee status is fixed in the fact of his employ-*156raent to work in Texas as well as in the other state. He continues to occupy this status even though he first works in the other state. Relying on certain statements in the opinion of this Court in Gallagher and Hale, Petitioner contends that Dossey is precluded from Texas benefits because he worked first in New Mexico; in other words, that under these two decisions a workman cannot acquire a status of a Texas employee if he has not in fact performed services for his employer in this state before doing so in the other state. We overrule these contentions and anything said in Gallagher or Hale contrary to this holding is disapproved.
The extraterritorial provisions of the Texas statute do not expressly preclude benefits for a Texas workman in the circumstances of Dossey. Indeed, there is no sound reason why such a workman cannot have an employee status in both Texas and the other state, with protection at his election in either state if permitted by the compensation statutes of the other state as construed by its courts. Be this as it may, however, Texas has the most legitimate public interest in Dossey as an injured workman. He is a Texas resident; the contract of hire occurred in Texas; his employer is domiciled in Texas; and he did, in fact, perform labor and services in both Texas and New Mexico before his injury in New Mexico. Cf. Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission, 306 U.S. 493, 59 S.Ct. 629, 83 L.Ed. 940 (1939), and Alaska Packers Ass’n v. Industrial Accident Commission, 294 U.S. 532, 55 S.Ct. 518, 79 L.Ed. 1044 (1935).
As previously reviewed, the evidence in the present record as to the terms and conditions of Dossey’s employment is inconclusive. It cannot be said that it is undisputed either that Dossey was, or that he was not, employed to work in Texas, as well as in New Mexico. It follows that we cannot determine as a matter of law whether or not he occupied the status of a Texas employee at the time of his injury in New Mexico. Ascertaining the real agreement of the parties from a consideration of the evidence bearing on the terms and conditions of the contract of employment, and hence determining employee status, is the function of the trier of facts. Petitioner requested submission to the jury of an issue inquiring whether Dossey occupied the status of a Texas employee at the time of his injury. The trial court denied the request and this action is the subject of points of error in the Court of Civil Appeals and here. It follows from what we have said above that Petitioner was entitled to a fact submission in these respects. This fact submission could be in terms of whether Dossey occupied the status of a Texas employee at the time of his injury, as requested by the Petitioner, with instructions in accordance with our holding here, or, as we regard more appropriate, in terms of whether under his employment contract Dossey was hired to work in Texas as well as in New Mexico.
The judgments of the trial court and of the Court of Civil Appeals are reversed, and the cause is remanded to the trial court.

. The statutory references are to Vernon’s Annotated Civil Statutes.

. Neither proviso is raised by Petitioner’s points of error.