Court Opinion

ID: 9830548
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:16:49.134957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:24.169313
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
. Texás Employers’ Insurance Association, appellant herein, insists in its motion for a rehearing that the cases of Maryland Casualty Company v. Donnelly (Tex. Civ. App.) 50 S.W.(2d) 388, and Denton v. Yazoo & Missis*627sippi Valley R. Co., 284 U. S. 305, 52 S. Ct. 141, 76 L. Ed. 310, support its contention, and, if followed by us, would require a reversal of tbis ease on the theory that Mamie Suttles at the time of his fatal injury had left his employment by Brown & Root and had been lent to Moody-Seagraves. We do not agree with appellant’s contention.
These two cases hold, and we believe it to be the law, that though a person may be in the general employ of one person, if he is lent to another person who assumes control over him and authority to direct and control both the manner and method of doing the work, such a servant becomes the special employee of such third person and ceases to be the employee of his general master.
We held in our original opinion and we reaffirm here that the facts in this case do not warrant the conclusion that Mamie Sut-tles had become the special employee of Moody-Seagraves.
In the case of Maryland Casualty Co. v. Donnelly, supra, Donnelly was working for Busby, who was engaged in the transfer business. Busby had a contract to haul material and deliver it to the south end of the plant. This he did and thereby completed his contract. After the material arrived at the end of the plant, the builder’s foreman directed that the material be carried inside the plant. Donnelly undertook this work under the direct control of such foreman, who directed both the manner and method, of doing such work. We have pointed out that the facts in the present case are very different. It was Brown & Root’s work to build the fish pond. The blasting of the spring was a part of this work. Suttles was therefore pursuing his master’s business when he was injured.1
The fact that the work had been pointed out by Mr. Seagraves does not justify the conclusion that he had assumed to dictate the manner and method of doing same, and especially when Mr. Seagraves had been gone from the ranch for some five days when the injury occurred.
In the case of Denton v. Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R. Co., supra, the ease was decided largely on the ground that a regulation of the Postmaster General, adopted by authority of a federal statute placed the control of loading mail in a mail car exclusively under the mail clerk and no one else. This controlling fact is not involved in the present case. However, the' Denton v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co. Case, supra, cites with approval the eases of Standard Oil Co. v. Anderson, 212 U. S. 215, 29 S. Ct. 252, 53 L. Ed. 480, and Driscoll v. Towle, 181 Mass. 416, 63 N. E. 922, which two decisions we feel uphold the decision we have made herein.
The motion for a rehearing will be overruled.