Claim of Rutledge v. Al. G. Kelly & Miller Bros. Circus

223 N.E.2d 334, 18 N.Y.2d 464, 276 N.Y.S.2d 873, 1966 N.Y. LEXIS 949
CourtNew York Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 1, 1966
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 223 N.E.2d 334 (Claim of Rutledge v. Al. G. Kelly & Miller Bros. Circus) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Claim of Rutledge v. Al. G. Kelly & Miller Bros. Circus, 223 N.E.2d 334, 18 N.Y.2d 464, 276 N.Y.S.2d 873, 1966 N.Y. LEXIS 949 (N.Y. 1966).

Opinions

Bergan, J.

These two cases, argued together, occupy a common ground to test the jurisdiction of the New York Workmen’s Compensation Board where employment stems from another State hut where work is carried on in New York and the accident occurs here.

They involve, too, a consideration of the effect of Matter of Nashko v. Standard Water Proofing Co. (4 N Y 2d 199) on such a New York accident as well as the modified influence of the rule of Matter of Cameron v. Ellis Constr. Co. (252 N. Y. 394).

In Rhodes v. Mushroom Transp. the claimant is a resident of Pennsylvania; the employer a Pennsylvania corporation and the employment based in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Claimant drove a truck regularly into New York to make deliveries and collections, where two thirds of his work activity was located. He was injured in New York on his way to the employer’s terminal at Olean and on a trip scheduled “Williamsport to Buffalo to Jamestown to Erie ”. The Workmen’s Compensation Board made an award which the Appellate Division has affirmed.

In Rutledge v. Kelly-Miller Bros, the employer ran a traveling circus based in Oklahoma and the claimant, who at the time of his injury at Auburn, New York, was acting as a guard at the circus, was a resident of Arkansas and was hired there by the [469]*469employer. The circus had come into New York on June 9, 1963 and performances were scheduled in New York until July 21, although appellants suggest that the circus was not here continuously during that entire period.

Claimant’s injury while the circus was performing at Auburn occurred June 28. He was attempting to prevent intruders from molesting animals. The Workmen’s Compensation Board, holding there was an accident within the jurisdiction of New York, made an award which the Appellate Division has affirmed.

Although the two landmark cases Cameron and Nashko each involved the jurisdiction of New York in out-of-State industrial accidents, the logic of the Cameron “ fixed place of employment ” test of New York jurisdiction of an out-of-State accident had been applied conversely to test whether New York should take jurisdiction of a New York accident.

Thus an argument is pursued by both employers as appellants here that Nashko, which greatly widened the criteria governing New York jurisdiction in an out-of-State industrial accident, had an obverse effect in New York in the present eases to enlarge the exclusive out-of-State nature of the employment and thus narrow the jurisdiction of New York.

Appellant Mushroom Transportation argues, for example, under Nashko both that ‘ ‘ there are just insufficient contacts with the State of New York to justify acceptance of jurisdiction by the State of New York” and under Cameron that claimant’s “ Avork in Nerv York State is always in transit ”. The consequence is suggested that if the Pennsylvania board would have jurisdiction under the Nashko criteria, New York would not have jurisdiction. A similar argument is made by employer-appellant Kelly-Miller that the “essential criteria” of Nashko “are simply not met ’ ’ in this record.

It seems necessary, then, first to examine conversely the effect of Nashko on the jurisdiction of the New York board over accidents occurring in New York from employments initiated elsewhere to see the conditions under which New York would take jurisdiction of an accident occurring in another State with control of the employment in New York.

The protean test laid down for the court by Lehman, J., in Matter of Cameron v. Ellis Constr. Co. (252 N. Y. 394, supra) was one of mobility of the work outside New York. If the work [470]*470was in a “ fixed place in another State ’’New York was concerned only remotely, if at all ’ ’ with it; but occasional ‘ ‘ transitory work outside of this State ” could be field work performed in tfie course of “ employment fiere ” (p. 398).

This pragmatic test fiad both strength, and weakness. It must be said in its favor that there was a rather considerable degree of objective certainty in it. It could be determined in most cases whether the worker moved around on the job in the foreign territory or whether he stayed in one place. As originally promulgated it had a logical enough basis.

It had the disadvantage of evolving into an unrealistic standard of what is or is not a New York employment and its judicial interpretation worked out some rather fine-spun distinctions (see, e.g., Matter of Baduski v. Gumpert Co., 277 App. Div. 591, 593-594, mot. for lv. to app. dsmd. 302 N. Y. 702).

But whatever its advantages or disadvantages it is demonstrable from the cases that jurisdictional determinations based on mobility were consistently applied in New York over a relatively long period.

Thus, in 1952 in Matter of Cradduck v. Hallen Co. (304 N. Y. 240) it was held that claimant, a resident of Pennsylvania who was paid by a New York corporation and who worked first in New York under the instructions of the New York employer and then was sent by it to Indiana where, on an iron construction job under the general supervision of the New York employer, he was injured, was not in a New York employment. The reason for the absence of New York jurisdiction, as Loüghraüst, Ch. J., noted, was that the employment “was not transitory but stationary” (p. 243). The Cameron test was here decisive.

Many cases illustrate the applicable scope of the rule. A traveling salesman working with mobility outside the State for a New York employer was deemed within the jurisdiction of the board (Matter of Roth v. Horn Co., 287 N. Y. 545; Matter of Flinn v. Remington Rand, 277 N. Y. 641; Matter of Wagoner v. Brown Mfg. Co., 274 N. Y. 593).

A similar decision was made as to a pilot flying from Massachusetts to New Jersey (Matter of Tallman v. Colonial Air Transp., 259 N. Y. 512). In Matter of Lewis v. Knappen Tippetts Abbett Eng. Co. (304 N. Y. 461) an engineer employed in New York to work in Israel was held to be engaged in a [471]*471New York employment, in part on the basis of the work being done “ at various places ” in the foreign territory (p. 466).

On the other facet of the rule, the “fixed employment ” test was consistently applied to deny jurisdiction to the New York board in out-of-State accidents. It was expressly followed, as we have seen, in Matter of Craddock v. Hallen Co. (304 N. Y. 240, supra) to the iron construction worker injured in Indiana.

It was followed similarly in such cases as Matter of Bagdalik v. Flexlume Corp. (281 N. Y. 858), where a New York employer hired claimant in Chicago to fix a sign there; Matter of Zeltoski v. Osborne Drilling Corp. (264 N. Y. 496), where claimant, hired in New York, was making test borings in Tennessee; Matter of Amaxis v. Vassilaros, Inc. (258 N. Y. 544), involving a painter hired in New York to work in New Jersey; Matter of Copeland v. Foundation Co. (256 N. Y. 568), where a policeman was hired by a New York employer to work at a particular place in Pennsylvania. See, also, Matter of Irizarry v. Zerega’s Sons (282 App. Div. 535).

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Bluebook (online)
223 N.E.2d 334, 18 N.Y.2d 464, 276 N.Y.S.2d 873, 1966 N.Y. LEXIS 949, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/claim-of-rutledge-v-al-g-kelly-miller-bros-circus-ny-1966.