Court Opinion

ID: 9865029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:21:15.093382+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:36:57.124402
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Knous
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Under the facts appearing of record, it is my conviction that during the period involved in this proceeding the soliciting agents of defendant in error at all times were “in employment” within the definition thereof contained in the Colorado Unemployment Act, because they had not been, nor would continue to be, free from the control and direction of defendant in error over the performance of their services, a prerequisite to exclusion from the act, by section 19 (g) (5) (a), chapter 167A Supplement 1935 C.S.A. thereof. Their inclusion under the act resulted from the element of control and direction exercised by the association over their conduct and not from the nature or character of the thing they were selling. This view is supported by the reasoning of Industrial Commission v. Northwestern Mutual Life Ins. Co., 103 Colo. 550, 88 P. (2d) 560, and Equitable Life Ins. Co. v. Industrial Commission, 105 Colo. 144, 95 P. (2d) 4.
Further, I am of the opinion that at no time during the interval here under consideration were such employees either insurance agents or insurance solicitors, for the patent reason that during such period it was unlawful for any agent of a mutual benefit association *414to so much as allude to a certificate issued by such “as insurance, or refer in selling to the benefits as such.” Section 259, chapter 87, Supplement to 1935 C.S.A. (S.L. ’37, p. 874, par. 22). Such statute, under which the defendant in error operated, was enacted after our decision in International Service Union Co. v. People ex rel., 101 Colo. 1, 70 P. (2d) 431, notwithstanding which the majority of our court concludes from the opinion in the latter case that the certificates sold by the agents of defendant in error were in fact insurance policies and hence the vendors thereof were insurance agents. In this particular field it is elementary that the legislature had the right to substitute its definition for that previously announced by the court, and after the legislative pronouncement the judicial definition was no longer controlling or available to contravene the express legislative declaration. Thus, since the agents and solicitors of defendant in error could not lawfully have been soliciting or selling insurance during any of the years here involved, they were not exempted from the operation of the Colorado Unemployment Compensation Act by reason of the 1939 amendatory enactment exempting “services performed by an insurance agent or insurance solicitor, to the extent that he is compensated by a commission.” S.L. 1939, chapter 171, §19 (g) (6) (h). Nor, it seems certain to me, can the self-serving declaration of the president of defendant in error, to the effect that the agents were vending “insurance,” be accepted as overcoming the effect of the statutory inhibitions upon their activities.
For the reasons assigned I concur in the affirmance of so much of the judgment of the district court as holds that the soliciting agents of defendant in error were in employment under the Unemployment Compensation Act, but dissent from the majority opinion in so far as it exempts them from its operation.
Mr. Justice Hilliard concurs in this opinion.