Court Opinion

ID: 9443751
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:29:48.233091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:35.622179
License: Public Domain

HUXMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The critical language of the exclusion clause excludes from coverage “bodily injury to or sickness, disease of any employee of the insured while engaged in the employment, * * * of the insured * * *.” I cannot agree that this language is free from ambiguity or not open to different constructions. If under the facts of this case there is but one construction that can be given to this language, then to me it must be that the employee at the time was not engaged in his employment for his master. To me the phrase “engaged in em-' ployment of the insured” means actively working at some phase of the job for which he was hired. Under the theory of the majority if an operator employed three drivers, each working eight -hour shifts, and in order to prevent the necessity of establishing relay stations so that a driver off duty and sleeping would be available at the point where he took over, he provided two berths for occupancy by the off duty employees, they would be engaged in their employment for twenty-four hours, while like drivers sleeping in relay stations would not be so engaged.
The term “engaged in the employment” is not synonymous with “arising out of the employment”. It is a much narrower term and must be so construed under these exclusion clauses. There are some analogous cases in which it has been held that an employee under similar facts was not engaged in his employment.
The facts in this case are indistinguishable from those in Ayres v. Harleysville Mut. Casualty Co., 172 Va. 383, 2 S.E.2d 303. In fact in some respects they make a. stronger case for coverage than was made by the facts in that case. That case, like this, involved a truck in charge of a driver and an assistant or stand-by driver, whose duty it was to relieve the driver at stated intervals and assist in loading and unloading the truck. In the original case Arono-vitch v. Ayres, reported in 169 Va. 308, 193. S.E. 524, 527, where judgment was obtained against the employer, it is stated that “Each in shifts drove the truck, and each helped to load and unload it.” At the time of the accident, Scruggs, the principal driver, and *561Ayres, his assistant and relief driver, had made two trips with the truck. On the third trip while operating in this way an accident occurred while Scruggs was driving and while Ayres was sitting at his side awaiting his turn to drive. The question in the case, like here, was whether Ayres was excluded from coverage by an exclusion clause, identical in principle, because at the time of the accident he was engaged in his employment in the business of the insured. The lower court found that he was and found for the insurance company. On appeal the judgment was reversed. The Virginia court held that there was ambiguity in the language of the exclusion clause. The court points out that the words “while” and “engaged” as used by Webster’s New International Dictionary have a restricted and a liberal meaning. Thus it is pointed out that “while” is defined as a space of time, especially when short and marked by some action or happening and that the word “engaged” means occupied or employed. The court then points out that under a liberal interpretation of these words Ayres would be engaged in the operation of the truck but that under the restricted and strict construction required in such cases he would not be so engaged.
In Moss v. St. Paul-Mercury Indemnity Co., La.App., 35 So.2d 867, the Louisiana court held that a student driver of a truck who asked to be temporarily relieved of driving the truck during his time on duty so he might study was not engaged in the course of his employment, although riding in the truck at the time of the accident.
The facts in Getlin v. Maryland Cas. Co., 9 Cir., 196 F.2d 249, are clearly distinguishable from the facts in this case. Obviously a soliciting agent whose business it is to solicit orders for his employer is engaged in his business while traveling or going from house to house, and so likewise when he has finished his solicitation in one place and is going to another for the purpose of continuing his solicitations, he is as much engaged in his business of soliciting orders as he is in going from one house to another house or from one block to another block in the same city.
The construction that one off duty and sleeping in a berth is not engaged in his employment also finds support in the regulations promulgated by the Interstate Commerce Commission under the power of the Motor Carriers Act of 1935, cited in the majority opinion. Thus those regulations provide that “Time spent by a driver resting or sleeping in a berth as defined in Paragraph (g) of this Section shall not be included in computing time on duty.” Also “That two periods of resting or sleeping in a berth, as defined in Section 191.1 (g), may be cumulated to give the aforesaid total of eight hours off duty.” Evidently the Interstate Commerce Commission construed these provisions to mean that time spent in a berth resting or sleeping was time off duty. If it is time off duty, it is no part of the employment, and during such time one cannot be engaged in his employment.
This employee was off duty because he was sick. He could not work. He could not drive the truck. He was as much off duty as though he had left the truck and spent this time in a cabin and, when recovered, had taken a car to catch the truck and go back on duty. The fact that he was being paid for this is in my view immaterial to the question before us. There are numerous instances where time off duty is paid for but that does not make time off duty time while engaged at work or in the employment.
For these reasons I would affirm the judgment.