Court Opinion

ID: 9531135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:07:54.240815+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:21.262794
License: Public Domain

WADE, Justice
(concurring in part — dissenting in part).
I do not think that Carl F. Johanson, Contractor, as an individual, was ever an employer of the other persons who worked with him in the contracting business. Up to the time the partnership was formed I think there was a joint enterprise between him and all of his associates with the possible exception of the teen-age boys. The evidence seems to be without dispute that when Johanson and Clayton commenced to work together, Johanson was not employer of Clayton, but they were associated together in a joint enterprise, and therefore as long as there were no others working with them they owed no contributions under the Utah Employment Security Act. I think this was also true after others joined them under the same arrangements as long as the others participated in the management of the business and fully understood the nature of their arrangements. From the evidence, there is doubt that these teenage boys understood the nature of these arrangements or participated in the management of the business and therefore the Commission had sufficient evidence from which it could find that these boys were employed not by Carl F. Johanson, but this association.
*397After the partnership was formed, of course, the partnership became the employer of all the persons who worked for it who were not members. But Carl F. Johanson individually was not then the employer of the other members nor of the other workmen.