Employers' Liability Assur. Corp. v. Young

203 S.W.2d 822, 1947 Tex. App. LEXIS 1130
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJune 9, 1947
DocketNo. 5796
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 203 S.W.2d 822 (Employers' Liability Assur. Corp. v. Young) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Employers' Liability Assur. Corp. v. Young, 203 S.W.2d 822, 1947 Tex. App. LEXIS 1130 (Tex. Ct. App. 1947).

Opinion

PITTS, Chief Justice.

This is a suit filed by appellant, The Em-ployers’ Liability Assurance Corporation, •Limited, against appellee, Alton C. Young, to set aside an award of the Industrial Accident Board allowing statutory compensation to appellee for injuries received by him in an automobile collision. Appellee answered by a cross action. Such answer alleged, in effect, that on September 22, 1945, while employed by the Amarillo Bridge Company, appellee was on his way to his home from the place of employment by conveyance furnished by his employer as a part of his contract of hire when he was seriously injured in a head-on collision between the car in which he was riding and another car. Appellant was a compensation insurance carrier for the employer.

The case was submitted to a jury in the trial court on numerous special issues, and, based upon the jury’s answers to such issues, judgment was rendered for appellee for the sum of $20 per week for 401 weeks from and after September 22, 1945, the first payment to be made at the end of the second week after the said date of injury. The judgment also protected appellee’s attorney for his fee. An appeal has been perfected to this Court. Appellant presents 25 assignments of error or propositions of law, some of which are grouped for presentation. The record is lengthy and that part of it involved in the issues joined here by the parties will be stated as the same are discussed.

Appellant combines several assignments and contends, in effect, that the evidence is insufficient to support the jury’s findings to the effect that employer had agreed to furnish transportation for ap-pellee as a part of its contract of hire and that such transportation was being so used by appellee at the time of his injury. But, it contends further, that the evidence shows conclusively that appellee had completed his day’s work for employer and was returning home by means of his own choosing and was not acting in the course of his employment when he received the injury in question and that the trial court erred in its failure to so hold. Appellee resists appellant’s contentions but the controversy is about the facts and not about the well recognized rule of law which provides that an employe is injured within the course of his employment when such injury occurs [824]*824while the employee is using the conveyance or means of transportation to and from work furnished hy his employer as a part of the consideration for the services of the employee.

Appellant concedes that the burden is on it to establish its contentions conclusively by the evidence and it further concedes that it is the duty of this Court in considering the issues here raised to disregard all conflicts in the testimony and to consider only the evidence adduced in the light most favorable to appellee and to indulge in ap-pellee’s favor every" intendment reasonably deducible from the evidence. Appellant further admits that an issue of fact is raised when the facts are controverted to the extent that different inferences may be reasonably drawn therefrom by the jury.

Appellee testified, in effect, that when he was employed, his employer, Mr. Barker, one of the partners and owners of the American Bridge Company, told him that the work would be at various places over the Panhandle; that appellee’s wages would be 87½ cents an hour for doing general construction work, and that transportation would be furnished by the employer from Amarillo to the job and return twice each week, that is, employer’s transportation would take him from Amarillo to the job on Monday morning and return him to Amarillo on Wednesday evening and take him again from Amarillo to the job on Thursday morning and return him to Amarillo on Saturday evening; that the employer would use its own truck or a pick-up to take him back and forth but if the truck and pick-up were not available the superintendent or one of the foremen or some other man who worked for employer were' being paid by the week to transport the men to and from the job; that Martin, employer’s superintendent, told him that Duncan, one of the employees, was a labor foreman for employer; that Duncan worked with him and the other employees and “bossed” them also by directing their labor on the job and other laboring men on the job took orders from Duncan; that either Martin or Barker (but he thought it was Martin).told him that Cant-well, an employee, was.being paid by employer to transport men back and forth in his own private car and that Cantwell told him he was being paid by employer for such additional services; that appellee had worked for employer about three weeks before his injury during all of which time the work had been done at Hereford, Texas, and he had ridden back and forth between Amarillo and Hereford several times; that he often rode with Cantwell who claimed he was being paid for such services; that cn Saturday afternoon, September 22, 1945, the date of the collision and injuries of appellee, McLaughlin, another employee, who was killed in the collision that resulted in appellee’s injuries, asked Martin to furnish them transportation that afternoon to Amarillo with somebody other than with Cantwell who, McLaughlin told Martin, drove too recklessly and Martin told them he would find other transportation for them and that employer’s pick-up would be available at six o’clock to take them home, but when they quit work at- six o’clock and got ready to> go home Duncan told Cantwell that he-(Duncan) was going to work overtime and would keep the pick-up himself and he told Cantwell to take McLaughlin and appellee to Amarillo and Duncan likewise told McLaughlin and appellee to ride with Cant-well to Amarillo since the pick-up had to-work overtime and they could not ride with him in it; that as a result of those instructions he got in Cantwell’s. car with McLaughlin and Cantwell and they left Hereford about six-thirty o’clock p.m. for Amarillo with Cantwell driving; that soon thereafter they had a head-on collision with another automobile on the highway about eight miles south of Amarillo which resulted in his injuries. Appellee further testified on cross-examination that he made a statement to a strange man while he was in the hospital and it was reduced to-writing by the said man and appellee signed it; that the man said he was securing information concerning the insurance on, Cantwell’s automobile that was damaged in the collision; that in the signed statement he said in part, “My riding with Cant-well was a matter ‘of accommodation on the part of Mr. Cantwell, and I have ridden, with him since working on the Hereford job”. Appellee further testified on redirect. [825]*825examination that superintendent Martin had told hi-m that Cantwell was being paid to haul the men back and forth to work but that he thought he should ask Cantwell about riding with him which he did and Cantwell told him it would be satisfactory. He further testified that it was customary for employer’s truck to pick up the men at Eighth and Tyler Streets in Amarillo when they were taken to Hereford by employer’s truck to work and the truck delivered them back to the same place when they returned to Amarillo, but that Cantwell picked him up and delivered him back to North Eighth ■and Fillmore Streets in Amarillo, within two blocks of his home, when he rode with him and that this was a matter of accommodation to him on the part of Cant-well which he had reference to in his signed statement and that he tried to pay ’Cantwell for such accommodation but Cant-well refused to' accept any pay and told him that employer was taking care of him for such transportation but that on one occasion he dropped $2.00 in Cantwell’s pocket anyway.

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Bluebook (online)
203 S.W.2d 822, 1947 Tex. App. LEXIS 1130, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/employers-liability-assur-corp-v-young-texapp-1947.