Claim of Ramos v. Taxi Transit Co.

276 A.D.2d 101

This text of 276 A.D.2d 101 (Claim of Ramos v. Taxi Transit Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Claim of Ramos v. Taxi Transit Co., 276 A.D.2d 101 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1949).

Opinions

Bergan, J.

Claimant’s husband, Carlos Ramos, was a taxicab driver in the city of New York. While in the course of this employment he was shot and killed on September 3, 1946, on Manhattan Avenue near 104th Street by Carlos Rodriguez. The Workmen’s Compensation Board has found that the death arose out of the employment as well as in the course of employment, .and the question presented on this appeal is whether there is [102]*102any substantial evidence to associate the murder with the employment.

Claimant had first been married in 1935. Her husband died in 1940. The following year she met Carlos Rodriguez. The next year she met and married, on November 20, 1942, Carlos Ramos. Rodriguez continuing to press his attentions upon claimant after her marriage, claimant complained to the police. This resulted in the indictment and prosecution of Rodriguez for compulsory prostitution in the General Sessions on April 6, 1943. Upon that criminal prosecution the claimant was the complaining witness against Rodriguez. She had at that time been married less than six months to the deceased.

On the 1943 indictment Rodriguez was convicted and sentenced to Sing Sing Prison. He was released in 1945., By the claimant’s own admissions to the police shown in the compensation hearings and wholly uncontradicted, Rodriguez, after his release from prison upon a conviction based on the claimant’s testimony, said he would kill her and her husband. The record also shows that not long before the husband Ramos was killed by Rodriguez a relative or friend of the claimant, one Medinas, had complained to the Board of Parole about these threats. It was when the police found from parole records that this complaint had been made that they decided to arrest Rodriguez for the murder of Ramos. There is some other uncontradicted evidence pointing to the personal hostility of Rodriguez to the claimant and her husband.

The meeting between Ramos and Rodriguez on the early morning of September 3, 1946, was entirely fortuitous. Rodriguez got into the cab of Ramos with a group of other men near a grill. Recognition between them did not occur until, sometime in the course of the trip. Rodriguez said: “Now we finish it out.” The cab was stopped on Manhattan Avenue. Rodriguez shot Ramos as he was about to get out of the driver’s side of the cab. All the men ran away. Ramos’ body was found near the running board of the cab.

Rodriguez was indicted for murder in the first degree. The trial in General Sessions was in progress during the pendency of the compensation hearings. He was convicted of murder in the second degree. Claimant was a witness against him, it may be assumed on the question of threats, although that is not in this record. The only substantial evidence in this record is that the murder was motivated by reasons personal between assailant and victim. This is uncontradicted. In many, but not alL [103]*103areas of the testimony, claimant relied on her constitutional privilege and refused to answer.

The theory upon which this award was based is that the shooting of the taxicab driver was a “ street risk ”. This expression was borrowed in New York from the English workmen’s compensation cases. (See opinion of Pound, J., in Matter of Katz v. Kadans & Co., 232 N. Y. 420.)

The significance of this and other English views on workmen’s compensation rested on the fact noted by Lyon, J., in Matter of Mihm v. Hussey (169 App. Div. 742) and again in Matter of De Filippis v. Falkenberg (170 App. Div. 153, affd. 219 N. Y. 581) that the source of the language in section 10 of the Workmen’s Compensation Law, “ arising out of and in the course of the employment ” was the English Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1906 (6 Edw. VII, ch. 58, § 1, subd. 1), as, indeed, the English statute was the source of much of the general concept as well as the language of our own.

But what Judge Pound demonstrated, and what the English cases which the judgment given in his case adopted meant, by a street risk ” was the peril peculiar to public ways and places when the street became the place of employment. Revenge of a personal enemy for a cause having no association with employment does not change its nature because the aggressor selects a stre'et or a factory to do violence. This sort of attack has never been regarded in the English cases, or our own, as an industrial accident “ arising out of ” employment.

The fact that the employee here and the claimant in Katz v. Kadans & Co. (supra) were employed to drive vehicles and were injured by an assault in the course of employment on the street does not make that case a good precedent for this one. There the chauffeur was attacked and stabbed by an insane man running wildly on the streets.

That such incidents are risks peculiar to the use of streets became the controlling fact of the decisions which turned upon the exposure that the work invited such incidents. There is no peculiar exposure to a personal enemy in one place more than another if it be assumed access to the victim is possible. Certainly the injury had no association with the employment.

It is commonly held that the conditions of the statute (“ arising out of ” and “ in the course of ” employment) must be treated conjunctively and it must be found that the injury arose out of as well as in the course of employment. (Matter of Heitz v. Ruppert, 218 N. Y. 148.)

[104]*104There, in a quarrel arising from the subject matter of the employment and in the course of the work, it was held that it could have been found as a fact on that record that the assault and injury arose out of as well as in the course of employment. The doctrine which accords finality to the factual findings of the commission was restated with a very considerable emphasis. (P. 153.)

Sometimes the trouble arises with the other branch of the conjunctive phrase, and the question is whether the accident is in the course of employment. In Matter of Field v. Charmette Knitted Fabric Co. (245 N. Y. 139) a quarrel arose between foreman and worker over the job. After the foreman left the building he was assaulted on the sidewalk, three or four feet from the entrance of the mill. There was, of course, no difficulty in finding that the assault arose from the employment and it was felt that the whole course of events was so continuous that the assault, even on the sidewalk, arose in the course of employment. (See, also, Matter of Collins v. Arobol Mfg. Co., 269 App. Div. 915.)

There is no difficulty here in sustaining that part of the board’s decision which finds the assault was in the course of employment because the employee was shot while actually doing his employer’s work and while in the taxicab. And it has been held by this court that where it is found that the injury was sustained in the course of employment a presumption follows that it arose out of employment in the absence of substantial evidence to the contrary. (Matter of Humphrey v. Tietjen & Steffin Mill Co., 235 App. Div. 470, affd. 261 N. Y. 549.) There the quarrel between coemployees and the shooting were found to have arisen from the employment.

But the presumption upon which that case turned in large part was invoked because it was not factually disputed. (See opinion McNamee, J., pp. 471, 472.) This kind of a presumption does not survive substantial controverting evidence. (Matter of Magna v.

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276 A.D.2d 101, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/claim-of-ramos-v-taxi-transit-co-nyappdiv-1949.