Court Opinion

ID: 9711767
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:38:36.548062+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:07.347494
License: Public Domain

Knutson, Justice
(dissenting).
It seems to me that we are stretching the meaning of our workmen’s compensation statutes too far here, even under the liberal construction usually given such statutes, when we hold that injuries arise out of and in the course of employment when suffered by an employee who deliberately becomes the aggressor in an assault upon a fellow employee without provocation at the time the assault takes place but purely to satisfy a personal grudge he has been nursing for two days, merely on the grounds that the grudge had its origin in a statement remotely relating to their employment. Apparently the justification for so holding is based on the view that the injured workman had no earlier opportunity to commit the assault because the paths of the two employees had not sooner crossed after the words spoken were relayed to the injured employee by his brother who happened to overhear the remarks made. One might well wonder what the result would be if the injured *317employee had seen his fellow workman but had decided that it would be better to wait until a better opportunity arose, or if they had met on. the street or elsewhere off the premises of the employer, but the injured workman had decided that he would wait until they were on .the premises of the employer so that if he were hurt he could collect compensation.
No court has gone as far as we are going here. It would be one thing to hold that an aggressor may recover when injured in a fight arising spontaneously out of something said on the job — a question not involved here and which I see no necessity of deciding now. Even that holding is contrary to the weight of authority.10 It is quite another thing to hold that an aggressor can still recover even though he has two days in which to cool off. If the test is to be that he must take the first opportunity to secure satisfaction of his continuing grudge, I suppose it would be immaterial whether he waited two days or two weeks just so long as their paths did not cross. I cannot believe that injuries suffered under these circumstances can be said to arise out of and in the course of the employment. I feel compelled to respectfully dissent.

 See, 6 Schneider, Workmen’s Compensation (Perm, ed.) § 1560(g), p. 179.