Court Opinion

ID: 9855336
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:22:56.670095+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:25:44.006195
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE JOHN C. HARRISON
dissenting:
I dissent.
I believe that as a result of the amendment passed by the 1963 Legislature, section 92-418, R.C.M.1947, that we are endangering the original intent of the Legislature when it passed workmen’s compensation legislation in not providing coverage to a man injured on the job in the performance of his assigned tasks. Chief Justice Callaway in the case of Dosen v. East Butte Copper Mining Co., 78 Mont. 579, 254 P. 880, in reviewing the objectives of the Workmen’s Compensation law said:
“* * * It is sufficient for present purposes to call to mind that the object sought was to substitute for the imperfect and economically wasteful common-law system by private action by the insured employee for damages for negligent fault on the part of the employer, which, while attended with great delay and waste, compensated those employees only who were able to *473establish the proximate connection between the fault and the injury, a system by which every employee in a hazardous industry might receive compensation for any injury suffered by bjm arising out of and during the course of the employment, whether the employer should be at fault or not, except only when the injury should be caused by the willful act of the employee. In other words, the theory of such legislation is that the loss occasioned by reason of injury to the employee shall not be borne by the employee alone — as it was under the common-law system — but directly by the industry itself and indirectly by the public, just as is the deterioration of the buildings, machinery, and other appliances necessary to enable the employer to carry on the particular industry. To every thinking person the object sought commends itself not only as wise from an economic point of view, but also as eminently just and humane.”
I, too, believe that Judge Allen was correct in his findings of fact and conclusions of law and that he should be affirmed.