Court Opinion

ID: 9862691
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 01:51:30.290186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:30:58.110844
License: Public Domain

Inglis, J.
(concurring). I am unable to agree with *651that portion of the opinion which holds that the defendants are estopped by their requests to charge to claim now that the issue under § 7423 should not have been submitted to the jury but should have been decided by the court as a matter of law. It is true that they requested a charge to the effect that the question whether the work in which the plaintiff was engaged was a part or process of the defendants’ business was one for the jury to decide and that in passing upon it the jury should apply the test whether it was work which the defendants’ own employees would ordinarily or appropriately perform. It is also true, however, that the defendants filed another request. That was that the court charge as a matter of law that the work was a part or process of the defendants’ business. In other words, it is now clear and must have been clear to the trial court that the defendants were making these two requests in the alternative.
The reason for our rule that a party will not be heard in this court to make claims inconsistent with those he made on the trial is that the trial court has the right to rely upon representations and concessions made by the parties, and no party can justly complain of any ruling which has been induced by his own claims. Housing Authority v. Pezenik, 137 Conn. 442, 448, 78 A. 2d 546. In the present case, the trial court could not have been misled into a belief that the defendants were not claiming that, as a matter of law, the work in which the plaintiff was engaged was a part or process of the defendants’ business. That claim was stated clearly in a request to charge. The position of the defendants was that they were requesting a charge giving the jury a test to apply to determine the issue as one of fact only in the event that the trial court decided that the question was not one of law. That they were taking that position was made perfectly *652plain. A party is entitled to make alternative claims even though, they involve different theories. The fact that he has done so, if thereby he has not misled the court, ought not to preclude him in this court from pursuing both theories. The reason for the rule invoked by the majority of the court does not obtain in this case. Therefore, the rule itself does not apply.
Although I disagree with my associates in that particular, I come to the same result in the case as a whole, namely, that there was no error in leaving to the jury the determination of the question whether the w:ork in which the plaintiff was engaged was a part or process of the defendants’ business. We have frequently referred to such a question as being largely one of degree and fact. Fox v. Fafnir Bearing Co., 107 Conn. 189, 194, 139 A. 778; Bogoratt v. Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Co., 114 Conn. 126, 136, 157 A. 860; Johnson v. Robertson Bleachery & Dye Works, Inc., 136 Conn. 698, 704, 74 A. 2d 196. We have also said that “no one exclusive test can be set up and . . . each case must be determined on its own facts.” Crisanti v. Cremo Brewing Co., 136 Conn. 529, 532, 72 A. 2d 655. The decision of the question involves not only a determination of the primary facts but also the drawing of a conclusion from those facts as to whether the work was such that it was a part or process of the claimed principal employer’s business. Such a conclusion is one of fact. Accordingly, where there is room for reasonable men to differ either in their findings of primary facts or in their drawing of a conclusion therefrom, the case involves issues of fact which must be submitted to the jury. In the present case, it cannot be said that no reasonable man could conclude that the work being done by the plaintiff was not a part or process of the defendants’ business. The defendants were not harmed by the court’s submission of the issue to the jury.