Feldmann v. Dot Delivery Service

425 S.W.2d 491, 1968 Mo. App. LEXIS 771
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedFebruary 20, 1968
DocketNo. 32852
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 425 S.W.2d 491 (Feldmann v. Dot Delivery Service) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Feldmann v. Dot Delivery Service, 425 S.W.2d 491, 1968 Mo. App. LEXIS 771 (Mo. Ct. App. 1968).

Opinion

TOWNSEND, Commissioner.

This Workmen’s Compensation case presents another illustration of the loaned employee problem. The Referee entered an award against the general employer and the special employer (and their respective insurers) as joint employers for healing period and for permanent partial disability of the claimant; he found that $2185 had been paid to the claimant for temporary total disability by the insurer of the general employer. Upon review the Industrial Commission found as a fact that the claimant was in the exclusive employ of the special employer at the time of his injury. The final award recites that claimant was not in the employ of the general employer at the time of injury; therefore compensation against the general employer and its insurer was denied. The recited compensation payable under the final award was for $3670 less the sum of $2185 previously paid by the insurer of the general employer. The special employer and its insurer appealed to the Circuit Court which sustained the final award of the Commission. The special employer and its insurer appear here as appellants and the general employer as respondent.

The employer parties to this proceeding are Andrew G. Hart operating under the name of Dot Delivery Service and engaged in local drayage and trucking and Brueck-man Cooperage Company, a corporation, carrying on the business of buying, selling and reconditioning used steel drums and wooden barrels. For the sake of brevity the parties will be hereafter referred to respectively as Dot and Brueckman.

In 1956, Dot and Brueckman orally entered into the present controversial arrangement involving the haulage of barrels for Brueckman. Dot bought from Brueck-man a truck owned by the latter, removed the barrel body therefrom and installed it on a new truck chassis purchased by Dot. At the time of claimant’s accident the name “Brueckman” still appeared on the body; elsewhere the Dot name appeared on the side of the truck. The agreement called for Dot to furnish a truck and driver to Brueckman at a fixed hourly rate. Fuel and oil and repairs were furnished by Dot. Brueckman paid for eight hours at the hourly rate in respect of any day during which the truck was in its service for any length of time, but if the truck were used at no time on a particular day there was no charge for that day. There were times when the driver at the close of a day would telephone Dot that Brueckman would not use the truck the following day; in such event the driver (present claimant) would work on his farm the following day but occasionally he would come in to Dot and make city deliveries for Dot. In the latter case he did not use the truck which otherwise he would drive on the Brueckman business. That truck was normally housed overnight at the Brueckman premises, and the driver began his day there at 8 a. m. The driver received his Dot pay check every Friday night at the Dot garage; in[493]*493come withholding taxes and social security taxes were withheld by Dot. Vacation pay was paid to the driver by Dot. The truck which was allocated to Brueckman business by Dot was never used for any other purpose. The arrangement with Brueckman was the only one of its nature into which Dot entered. Mr. Hart testified that because of one driver’s personal differences with Brueckman’s superintendent Hodge he removed that driver from the Brueck-man job at the insistence of Hodge and that he (Hart) then filled in on the driver’s job himself as a substitute. After claimant was hired by Dot, Hart rode the job with claimant for a few days in order “to see if he could drive”. When Mr. Hart was acting as a substitute, he was instructed to make stated deliveries and pick-ups and to stop by certain companies on the way in or out to see if they had any drums to pick up. While not instructed the route to follow, “he [Hodge] would tell you what accounts to go to first”. In picking up barrels he was given definite instructions as to the kind of barrels to be picked up and as to a kind not to be picked up because of nails in the body of the barrels. He stated further that claimant was hired for the specific job of driving for Brueckman and that Brueckman “wanted one driver at all times because it was beneficial to them going around and learning these pick-ups and stops and what type of drums to get” — that Brueckman insisted that it have a familiar driver “That’s around the job every day”. When a delivery or pick-up necessitated the payment of a bridge toll, the amount of same was furnished to the driver in cash by Brueckman at the beginning of a trip. Mr. Hart testified that otherwise than as above stated he had no “control or jurisdiction of the use of that truck when it was given to Brueckman Cooperage” and no control or supervision of the driver as to what he did or “anything about his working”.

Testimony of the claimant: He did the hauling at Brueckman for five years or more. The work was fairly steady; sometimes he worked five days a week and at other times only three or four days. When he went to work for Brueckman on any particular day he never received any instructions from anybody at Dot as to what he had to do. He received his orders from the superintendent of Brueckman either to make deliveries or to make pick-ups, “whichever comes first”. When he entered upon his employment Mr. Hart instructed him to follow Brueckman orders in making deliveries or pick-ups, — “Whatever they told me to do. That they were to give me my orders when I went down there to pick up”. As to his actual operations claimant testified:

“Q. Now, they gave you an invoice for each stop you were going to make and then you figure out this routing or this figuring yourself?
A. All truck drivers do that.
Q. Did Hodge [superintendent] ever tell you that you follow any particular route through the city or take any particular streets?
A. No.
Q. Did he do anything more than just say here are some invoices, you go out and deliver them?
A. It’s more the way it went.
Q. Now, on pick-ups, were there any particular instructions about how you were to handle that?
A. Well, it was stacked the same way
Q. And that would be the extent of the instructions that you got from the Brueckman Cooperage?
A. Unless something special come up and they wanted you to do something particular.
******
Q. Did Brueckman ever tell you, give you any instructions whatsoever with re[494]*494gard to how you were to drive that truck or handle the truck?
A. Why, no. They never told me what street.
******
Q. While you worked for Brueckman Cooperage at any time did anybody other than the Brueckman Cooperage people give you instructions on what to do?
A.

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Bluebook (online)
425 S.W.2d 491, 1968 Mo. App. LEXIS 771, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/feldmann-v-dot-delivery-service-moctapp-1968.