Guy v. Arthur H. Thomas Co.

378 N.E.2d 488, 55 Ohio St. 2d 183, 9 Ohio Op. 3d 138, 1978 Ohio LEXIS 634
CourtOhio Supreme Court
DecidedJuly 19, 1978
DocketNo. 77-1330
StatusPublished
Cited by63 cases

This text of 378 N.E.2d 488 (Guy v. Arthur H. Thomas Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Guy v. Arthur H. Thomas Co., 378 N.E.2d 488, 55 Ohio St. 2d 183, 9 Ohio Op. 3d 138, 1978 Ohio LEXIS 634 (Ohio 1978).

Opinion

Loches,, J.

The issue before this court is whether the remedy under the Ohio Workers’ Compensation Law (R. C. Chapter 4123) is exclusive as to an employer’s liability. Appellant does not contend that she has an action against appellee hospital for the original compensable injury, but does assert that her action against the appellee hospital for malpractice is not prohibited by R. C. 4123.74. In her first proposition of law, appellant argues that where, as in the instant cause, the employer occupies a second or dual capacity that confers obligations unrelated to and independent of those upon it as an employer, an employee injured as [185]*185a result of a violation of the employer’s second or dual-capacity obligation is not barred by the workers’ compensation laws from recovering from that employer. Appellant thus raises the application of the dualreapacity doctrine, urging that, in the instant cause, appellee hospital appears in two capacities, i. e., as an employer and as a hospital, and that, as an employer, appellee hospital is liable for workers’ compensation benefits, and, as a hospital it is liable in tort. See 2A Larson, Workmen’s Compensation Law 14-112, Section 72.80 (1976).

The Court of Appeals rejected this argument premised upon dual-capacity, that appellee hospital’s malpractice was in its capacity as her treating physician, not in its capacity as appellant’s employer. The Court of Appeals based its judgment on its reading of Section 35, Article II of the Ohio Constitution, and R. C. 4123.741 and thus found that, since appellant’s injury “was received or contracted in the course of her employment at the defendant hospital she is barred from proceeding against the hospital for aggravating the injury.” Appellee argues analogously in its brief before this court that acceptance of the dual-capa[186]*186city doctrine advanced by appellant would be in direct contravention to the mandates of R. C. 4123.74 and Section 35, Article II of the Ohio Constitution.

We are not persuaded that the purpose of either R. C. 4123.74 or Section 35, Article II of the Ohio Constitution, is to prohibit appellant’s action against appellee hospital for its negligent treatment. The genesis of workers’ compensation in the United States and Ohio was the inability of the common-law remedies to cope with modern industrialism and its inherent injuries to workers. See State, ex rel. Munding, v. Indus. Comm. (1915), 92 Ohio St. 434. Implicit therefrom is the concept that workers’ compensation statutes relate generally to the legal connection or relationship between employer and employee. Perhaps best expressing the no-fault theory of workers’ compensation as one essentially of status is the following comment by the Supreme Court of the United States, in Cudahy Packing Co. v. Parramore (1923), 263 U. S. 418, at page 423:

“Workmen’s compensation legislation rests upon the idea of status, * * * that is, upon the conception that an injured workman is entitled to compensation for an injury sustained in the service of an industry to whose operation he contributes his work as the owner contributes his capital —the one for the sake of the wages and the other for the sake of the profits. The act is based not upon any act or omission of the employer, but upon the existence of the relationship which the employee bears to the employment because of and in the course of which he has been injured.”

The essentiality of this status or relationship is connoted in Ohio by the usage of the very terms “employer” and “employee” in both Section 35, Article II of the Ohio Constitution, and R. C. 4123.74. See Conrad v. Youghiogheny & Ohio Coal Co. (1923), 107 Ohio St. 387; Indus. Comm. v. Bateman (1933), 126 Ohio St. 279; Prendergast v. Indus. Comm. (1940), 136 Ohio St. 535. Moreover, the importance of the existence of this status for the applicability of Ohio’s workers’ compensation is readily discern[187]*187ible by the plethora of eases addressing the issues of whether one'was an “employee” or whether the injury was one “received * * * in the course of or arising out of,” the injured employee’s employment.2

In juxtaposition, where the employer-employee relationship does not exist, workers’ compensation has not been found to affect the right of a workman to sue a third-party tortfeasor for injuries received in the course of his employment through negligence. Trumbull Cliffs Furnace Co. v. Shachovsky (1924), 111 Ohio St. 791; Ohio Public Service Co. v. Sharkey (1927), 117 Ohio St. 586, overruled on other grounds, 120 Ohio St. 394; George v. Youngstown (1942), 139 Ohio St. 591.

The dual-capacity doctrine advanced by appellant has been utilized by the California Supreme Court in Duprey v. Shane (1952), 39 Cal. 2d 781, 249 P. 2d 8. The facts in Duprey, supra, are strikingly analogous to the cause sub judice. The plaintiff was a nurse employed by the Shane Diagnostic Foundation. After receiving a compensable injury in the course of her employment she was treated by her employer and received further disability as a result of the negligently administered treatment. In holding the employer vulnerable to a common-law suit for malpractice, the court found the employer, in his role as a doctor, to be a “person other than the employer,” i. e., a third party. The court maintained, at page 793, that the holding of this case was justified by the unusual facts:

“ ‘It is true that the law is opposed to the creation of a dual personality, where to do so is unrealistic and purely legalistic. But where, as here, it is perfectly apparent that the person involved — Dr. Shane — bore towards his employee two relationships — that of employer and that of-[188]*188a doctor— there should be no hesitancy in recognizing this fact as fact. Such a conclusion, in this case, is in precise accord with the facts and is realistic and not legalistic.’ ”

It has been stated that the decisive test of dual-capacity is not with how separate the employer’s second function is from the first, but whether the second function generates obligations unrelated to those flowing from the first, that of an employer. 2A Larson, supra, at 14-117. In Duprey, supra, the court stated, at pages 792-793:

“ * * [B]ut on principle and logic it would seem that it should make no difference to the liability of a doctor for malpractice whether the attending doctor is the employer or an insurance doctor. * * * There seems to be no logical reason why an employer-doctor, when he undertakes to treat an industrial injury, should not be responsible in a civil action for his negligent act in treating that injury. * * * In treating the injury Dr. Shane did not do so because of the employer-employee relationship, but did so as an attending doctor, and his relationship to [ ] [plaintiff] was that of doctor and patient.’ ”

Although not expressly referring to the dual-capacity doctrine, it is apparent that the Supreme Court of the United States, in Reed v. The Yaka (1963), 373 U. S. 410, applied the test of dual-capacity in arriving at its result. In Reed, supra,

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Bluebook (online)
378 N.E.2d 488, 55 Ohio St. 2d 183, 9 Ohio Op. 3d 138, 1978 Ohio LEXIS 634, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/guy-v-arthur-h-thomas-co-ohio-1978.