Metcalf v. Case

565 P.2d 736, 278 Or. 629
CourtOregon Supreme Court
DecidedJune 21, 1977
DocketNo. 34-617, SC 24671; No. 34-618, SC 24672
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 565 P.2d 736 (Metcalf v. Case) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Oregon Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Metcalf v. Case, 565 P.2d 736, 278 Or. 629 (Or. 1977).

Opinion

HOLMAN, J.

Upon appeal these cases resolve themselves into a third party claim for damages for personal injuries against only the defendant Cobb. Plaintiff was covered by workmen’s compensation through her employer, Mill Conversion Contractors, Inc. (Mill). She claims she was injured while at work by the negligence of the employees of Cobb, who was also a complying employer under the Workmen’s Compensation Law.

Cobb interposed two defenses by supplemental answer: (1) Plaintiff’s employer, Mill, and Cobb were both complying employers who had "joint supervision and control” over the premises upon which plaintiff and Cobb’s employees were working at the time of plaintiff’s injury, and plaintiff’s third party claim was therefore barred by the provisions of ORS 656.154; and (2) Cobb was an employee of Mill, as was plaintiff, and plaintiff’s third party claim was therefore barred by the "exclusive remedy” provision of ORS 656.018. Both defenses were tried before the trial court which upheld them and entered judgment for Cobb.1 Plaintiff appeals, claiming there is no evidence to sustain either defense.

Plaintiffs husband brought an action against Cobb for loss of consortium, and the above defenses were also interposed and upheld in his case at a combined hearing of the two cases. The cases have also been joined for the purpose of appeal. For convenience, this opinion is written as if Mrs. Metcalf were the sole plaintiff, whereas, in fact, it is dispositive of identical issues in her husband’s case as well.

There is no substantial dispute in the evidence. Mill owned a ten-acre filbert orchard which was laid out in a rectangular shape. It desired to put a road across the width of the orchard, thereby dividing it into separate [632]*632halves north and south, and to build an office building and warehouse on part of the north half. Mill entered into an oral agreement with Cobb for Cobb to furnish men and equipment at hourly rates to do such work as Mill should direct in building the road and in preparing the building site. Cobb was also to furnish the rock for the road. Either party could terminate the arrangement at any time without regard to whether the work was completed. The equipment was composed primarily of a bulldozer and a grader. Although Mill was its own contractor, it apparently relied upon the expertise of Cobb’s foreman to accomplish the work properly, since Mill’s representative at the job site was not shown to have had any particular expertise in the type of work the men and equipment were to perform. Mill, however, designated the location of the project and the work that was to be accomplished and could have directed the manner in which such work was to be executed had it so desired. Cobb paid the workmen he furnished, made the necessary withholdings from their wages, and had them covered by workmen’s compensation.

The work entailed the removal of the filbert trees which covered the site designated for the road and buildings. The filberts were ready to be harvested and Mill decided to harvest them before the trees were removed. Plaintiff was a member of a filbert harvesting crew hired by Mill. The filbert harvesters were directed to gather first the nuts from the trees which were to be removed, and this harvesting had progressed a day or two when Cobb’s men appeared on the scene. The harvesting crew continued to work ahead of Cobb’s men until all the nuts were gathered from the trees which were to be removed, and then worked elsewhere in the orchard without regard to the project in which Cobb’s men and equipment were involved.

Plaintiff was injured four or five days after the harvesting crew had completed gathering the nuts upon the area designated to be the road and building [633]*633site. She and the crew were working on the south half of the orchard on which no work by Cobb’s men and equipment was contemplated. Mill stored the harvested filberts in a bam on a neighbor’s property north of the orchard. It also kept on the neighbor’s property a tractor and trailer which were used to transport the sacks of harvested filberts to the bam. Because the construction site was between the bam and that part of the orchard from which the nuts were then being harvested, it was not unusual for members of the harvesting crew to pass over the construction site on their way to and from the bam. At the end of the day in question, plaintiff had accompanied her son to secure the tractor and trailer with which to haul the day’s accumulation of filberts to the bam. On the return trip, as plaintiff’s son was driving the tractor and plaintiff was sitting upon the trailer, they ran over a ditch, allegedly dug by Cobb’s men without warning of its existence and in a manner which obscured its location. As a result of the jolt to the trailer caused by its striking the ditch, plaintiff’s spine received injuries which are the basis of her claim for damages.

The elements of the defense provided for in ORS 656.1542 are set forth in Bass v. Dunthorpe Motor [634]*634Trans., 258 Or 409, 411-12, 484 P2d 319 (1971), as follows:

"* * * [T]he defendant must show (1) that he was an employer subject to the Workmen’s Compensation Act; (2) that he or his workmen causing injury had joint supervision and control with the injured workman’s employer of the premises on which the injury occurred; and (3) that he and the injured workman’s employer were engaged in the furtherance of a common enterprise or in the accomplishment of the same or related purposes in operation, which means that the injured workman must have been working with the employees of the tort feasor in a common activity and exposed to the hazards created by such mutual engagement of the employers. [Citations.]”

It is our opinion that the third requirement is missing here. At the time of the accident, the harvesting crew and Cobb’s men were not engaged in the furtherance of a common enterprise or in the accomplishment of the same or related purposes of operation as contemplated by the statute. Although it could be argued that Cobb’s men and the harvesting crew were engaged in the furtherance of a common enterprise during the time the latter group was gathering the nuts located on the sites for the road and the buildings, the same cannot be argued following completion of such harvesting on the construction sites when the efforts of the two groups of employees were being directed toward entirely different objectives bearing no relationship to a common enterprise or to each other.

Insofar as Cobb’s second defense involving ORS 656.0183 is concerned, it can be argued that there is [635]*635evidence that the men furnished by Cobb were employees of Mill for the purposes of the compensation act. However, that is not the issue raised by the pleadings. The contention is that Cobb himselfw&s an employee of Mill. There is no evidence from which a factfinder could come to such a conclusion. Cobb was an entrepreneur engaged in the furnishing of equipment and men with expertise for a price.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Krushwitz v. McDonald's Restaurants of Oregon, Inc.
880 P.2d 483 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1994)
Errand v. Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, Inc.
869 P.2d 358 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1994)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
565 P.2d 736, 278 Or. 629, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/metcalf-v-case-or-1977.