Southwestern Grocery Co. v. State Industrial Commission

1922 OK 100, 205 P. 929, 85 Okla. 248, 1922 Okla. LEXIS 78
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedMarch 21, 1922
Docket12671
StatusPublished
Cited by29 cases

This text of 1922 OK 100 (Southwestern Grocery Co. v. State Industrial Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Southwestern Grocery Co. v. State Industrial Commission, 1922 OK 100, 205 P. 929, 85 Okla. 248, 1922 Okla. LEXIS 78 (Okla. 1922).

Opinion

PITCHFORD, V. C. J.

This is an appeal from the order of the ‘State Industrial Commission, awarding to the claimant, Ralph Radecke, certain compensation, and ordering the petitioner, the Southwestern Grocery Company, to pay all the medical expenses growing out of an accident received in July, 1921, by the claimant while in the employment of the petitioner. There is no .controversy over the facts involved.

The petitioner owned and operated a grocery and meat market in the residential district of the city of Tulsa, Okla. The meat market, or butcher shop, was in the rear of the store and in charge- of a butcher. The claimant, Radecke, was employed to assist the butcher after school hours and on Saturdays, his duties being confined to dressing chickens and cleaning up the meat market. In the meat department th<!re were an electric sausage grinder and a hand-power meat slicer. At the time of the injury, the claimant was in a rear room, adjoining the meat market, engaged in dressing chickens, using in connection therewith a knife seven or eight inches long. There was no kind of machinery in the room where the claimant was working. Claimant, at the time of the injury, was cutting a chicken -through the back bone, and the knife slipped and struck him in the right groin. He was taken to the hospital where he •remained for about 15 days, and was unable to resume his work for a period of seventeen weeks and three days.

It is contended by the petitioner, the grocery company, that, under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, and the amendments thereto, there is no provision including the kind of employment engaged in by claimant at the time of the injury; that a retail grocery store does not come within the provisions of the act. On the other hand it is contended by the respondent that the fact that there was a sausage grinder in the store operated by electricity, would bring the business, including both the meat market and the groedry store proper, under the head of “Workshop where machinery is used.”

We have examined many authorities, but have been unable to find where this identical question has been passed upon by any of the courts of last resort; however, there appears to be running through the great majority of the decisions, construing the Workmen’s Compensation Act, a sympathetic appreciation of the humane considerations, as .well as a desire to do justice to employer and employe alike, on the part of the lawmakers in enacting this law. We are thoroughly in accord with the purposes of the act, and inclined to follow that line tof decisions holding that the act and all parts thereof should be liberally construed, in order that the legislative intent should be effectuated and safeguarded.

*249 Section 11 of chapter 246, Session Laws of 1915, p. 471, provides that, in any proceeding for the enforcement of a claim for compensation under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, it shall he presumed, in the absence of substafitial evidence to the contrary, that the claim comes within the provisions of the act. While section 10 of chapter 14, Session Laws of 1919, p. 14, provides that the decision of the commission shall be final as to all considerations of fact, it therefore follows that the sole question for our consideration is, Does a retail grocery store come within the provisions of the act, by reason of having in connection therewith a meat market wherein is installed a sausage grinder operated by electricity?

The instant case is governed by the 1919 act, which is found in Session Laws of 1919, p. 14. Section 2 of this act provides that compensation shall be payable for injuries sustained by employes engaged in the hazardous employments therein enumerated, and included in such employments are “workshops where machinery is used.”

Hazardous employment is defined by the act as “All manual or mechanical work or labor connected with or incident to one of the industries, plants, factories, lines, occupations or trades mentioned in section 2 of the act.”

It is contended, however, on the part of the respondents that, regardless of whether or not the business conducted by the petitioner came under the term of “workshop where machinery is used,” the grocery company would be liable under section 2 of article 1 of chapter 246 of the act of 1915, supra, which.after enumerating the various hazardous employment covered by the act, provides:

“If there be or arise any hazardous occupation or work other than those herein-abovei enumerated, it shall come under this act.”

We are of the opinion, and so hold, that this provision of the act just quoted was repealed by section 1 of the act of 1919, supra, which provides: •

“That section 2 of article 1 of chapter 246, Session Laws of 1915. be and the same is hereby amended to read as follows:

Section 2. Compensation provided for in this act shall be payable for injuries sustained by employes engaged in the following hazardous employments, to wit:

“Factories, cotton gins, mills and workshops where machinery is used; printing, electrotyping, photoengraving and stereotyping plants where machinery is used; foundries. blast -furnaces, mines', wells gas works, gasoline plants, oil refineries and' allied plants and works, water works, reduction works, elevators, dredges, smelters, powder works, glass .factories, laundries operated by power, creameries operated by power quarries, construction and engineering works, construction and operation of pipe lines, tanneries, paper mills, transfer and storage, construction of public roads, wholesale mercantile 'establishments, employes employed exclusively as salesmen or clerical workers excepted; operation and repair of elevators in office buildings: logging, lumbering, street and interurban railroads not engaged in interstate commerce, buildings being constructed, repaired or demolished,' farm buildings and farm improvements excepted; telegraph, telephone, electric light or power plants or lines; steam heating or power plants and railroads not engaged in interstate commerce.”

Section 2, so amended, omitted entirely the foregoing provision of 1915 act. Section 1 of the act of 1919 superseded section 2 of the act of 1915, and now controls. Even if section 2 of the act of 1915 had not been amended, this provision could have no bearing on the instant case.

In Board of Commissioners of Kingfisher County v. Grimes et al., 75 Okla. 219, 182 Pac. 897, Owen, C. J., in delrveiring the opinion of the court, says:

“This section of the act also provides if there be or arise any hazardous occupation other than those enumerated, it shall come under the act. It is urged that work on the state highway is a hazardous occupation and is included under this provision of the section. This language must he construed, under the rule of ejusdem generis, with that more particularly described by the preceding words of the context. General words do not explain or amplify particular terms preceding them, but are themselves restricted and explained by the particular terms. This general language must be construed to include employments of the same general character, but not embracing every species of employment in which the services of others may be rendered.”

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Bluebook (online)
1922 OK 100, 205 P. 929, 85 Okla. 248, 1922 Okla. LEXIS 78, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/southwestern-grocery-co-v-state-industrial-commission-okla-1922.