Lopanic v. Berkeley Cooperative Gin Co.

191 So. 2d 108, 1966 Miss. LEXIS 1200
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 24, 1966
DocketNo. 44094
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 191 So. 2d 108 (Lopanic v. Berkeley Cooperative Gin Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lopanic v. Berkeley Cooperative Gin Co., 191 So. 2d 108, 1966 Miss. LEXIS 1200 (Mich. 1966).

Opinion

BRADY, Justice:

This is a case of first impression in the State of Mississippi. In April 1965 the appellant filed a petition with the Mississippi Workmen’s Compensation Commission for double benefits under Mississippi Code Annotated section 6998-54 (1952). The Attorney Referee and the full Commission found against the appellant Upon appeal to the circuit court the Commission’s order was affirmed, and an appeal is thus perfected to this Court.

The record reveals the following pertinent facts: On October 29, 1961, the appellant sought and obtained employment from the appellee, the appellant being on that date seventeen years, one month and eleven days of age. On November 3, 1961, he was injured and lost the fifth, fourth and third fingers of his left hand and ninety percent of the index finger and seventy-five percent of the thumb. He has lost one hundred percent industrial use of his left hand just as if it had been completely severed from the wrist. He can only use his left hand to hold a cigarette or small object by pressing the remaining part of his thumb against the base of his index finger.

The operation of the appellee mill requires the work of nine persons. The appellant and a Negro named Roosevelt Manuel were engaged as sucker men and tie men. Epph-ram Holly was a yard man, Wash Brown was a clean-up man, and Mr. P. A. Peden was the ginner. The press crew consisted of Jesse Roscoe and two other men. Mrs. Peden was the office manager and bookkeeper. The gin operated on two twelve hour shifts. Appellant’s hours of work were from 7:00 a. m. to 7:00 p. m. seven days a week. The work which he performed consisted of climbing into the trailers which brought the cotton from the fields to the gin and directing a twelve inch suction pipe into the cotton in the trailer. The cotton was thus sucked up into the gin and the trailer emptied. The appellant was required to move the pipe or sucker over the cotton so that all the cotton could be removed from the trailer. When the appellant was not operating the sucker pipe, he was required to prepare the metal ties or strips used to band or bind the cotton after the ginning processes were completed. One sucker operator would unload a trailer while the other prepared the ties. The tie is a flexible metal strip about one inch wide by one-eighth inch thick and approximately twelve feet long. The ties came to the gin in bundles of thirty each. There was a buckle or fastening device for each tie. Each bundle of ties was secured by a metal band at each end. Each tie was bent near the end into the shape of a hook. A buckle was placed on it, and each buckle was struck with a hammer and closed. It was then placed back in a rack. The tie was then ready to be bound around the bale of cotton after the cotton was pressed.

The proof shows that the gin used or consumed approximately sixty ties per hour so as to require one tie to be prepared approximately every minute while the gin was in operation. The sucker operator, when handling the ties, had to lift two bundles and go through the aforementioned procedure sixty times each hour. The record discloses that if the sucker operator failed to feed the cotton into the gin, the gin would not operate and would have to be shut down. Likewise, if the sucker operator failed to keep a sufficient supply of ties available, the gin could not operate since the bales of cotton could not be fastened.

The record discloses that practically all the cotton ginned by appellee in 1961 was mechanically picked. During the ginning process the cotton was dumped from a mechanical cotton picker in the field into [110]*110trailers which had a capacity of from one to twelve bales, the average trailer holding four or five bales. The record disclosés that appellee’s gin processed ten bales of seed cotton per hour or a bale every six minutes. The time required for unloading the average trailer was from twenty-five to thirty minutes. It is obvious that a highly coordinated system was utilized by the appel-lee in the handling of the cotton.

The record further shows that when the seed cotton arrived at the gin, it varied in moisture content; that it was perishable and had to be processed or ginned within forty-eight hours in order to avoid a substantial loss in value. The record discloses that during the ginning process this moisture was removed by the use of hot air; foreign matter was removed and the seed separated from the lint or cotton fibers. Seed cotton as it arrived at appellee’s gin was not a marketable product. However, subsequent to the ginning process the cotton became marketable and was sold in the condition in which it left appellee’s gin. In a matter of six minutes the product was converted from a non-marketable commodity into a marketable one with a value of approximately $150 to $170 per five hundred pound bale of lint cotton. In addition, cottonseeds were obtained and likewise had a marketable value.

Around 4:30 or 5:00 o’clock on the afternoon of November 3, as appellant performed his duties, the gin choked up. ■ This was not an infrequent occurrence due to electrical failures and other reasons. Appellant was instructed by the ginner, who was his foreman, to come inside the gin and correct the difficulty. While trying to remove the lint cotton which had balled up around some of the gin saws, appellant’s left hand came in contact with some of the machinery, resulting in the trauma and surgical amputation of the fingers of his left hand.

It is agreed that appellant’s average weekly wage was $50.40; that he was completely and totally disabled as a result of the injury for a total of eighteen weeks and two days; and that he has lost the use of his left hand. These facts were found by the Attorney Referee and the Commission. The Attorney Referee, affirmed by the Commission and subsequently by the Circuit Court of Washington County, also found that appellant was under eighteen years of age at the time of the accident, even though he had represented to his employer at the time he applied for employment that he was nineteen years of age. Likewise, the Attorney Referee found: “That there is no evidence to the effect that there has been filed with the Secretary of the Commission a certified copy of the findings of the Court of Final Appeal on the prosecution and conviction of the employer for violation of the Child Labor Law in this cause, as required by the Commission’s procedural Rule Number 13;” and “That the employer herein did not at the time of the injury to the claimant work adult male labor only.”

The opinion of the Attorney Referee, which concerns us in this appeal, is as follows:

It is the opinion of the Attorney Referee that Section 48 of the Compensation Act is a penal statute that is based on a criminal statute, Section 6986 of the Mississippi Code of 1942, both of which require a strict construction.
I am further of the opinion that the cotton gin does not come within the meaning of Section 6986 of the Code of 1942 in that it is not specifically mentioned and it could have easily been included had the Legislature so intended. For these reasons and the fact that there has been no compliance with the Commission’s procedural Rule Number 13 with respect to businesses not specifically mentioned as hazardous, I am of the opinion that the claimant has failed to establish a claim for double compensation against the employer herein.

There are presented to us for consideration two questions: First, was the appellee’s gin, under the facts of this case, a “manufacturing establishment” under the provi[111]

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Bluebook (online)
191 So. 2d 108, 1966 Miss. LEXIS 1200, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lopanic-v-berkeley-cooperative-gin-co-miss-1966.