Uganik Fisheries, Inc. v. Alaska Industrial Board

12 Alaska 242
CourtDistrict Court, D. Alaska
DecidedJanuary 27, 1949
DocketNo. 5990-A
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 12 Alaska 242 (Uganik Fisheries, Inc. v. Alaska Industrial Board) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Alaska primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Uganik Fisheries, Inc. v. Alaska Industrial Board, 12 Alaska 242 (D. Alaska 1949).

Opinion

FOLTA, District Judge.

Plaintiff has appealed from a decision of the Alaska Industrial Board awarding compensation to Edor Mehline for an injury sustained August 3, 1947, at Uganik Bay, Alaska.

Mehline’s employment as a carpente'r by the' San Juan Fishing and Packing Co. at Uganik Bay, Alaska, for the fishing season of 1947, was governed by the terms of a contract entered into between his union and the Alaska Salmon Industry, Inc., representing various packers, including apparently San Juan Fishing and Packing Co. and the Uganik Fisheries, Inc. Under this contract the pay of carpenters, including that of defendant, was fixed at $364.05 [245]*245a month for a six-day work-week of forty-eight hours, with premium pay for overtime and for work done on Sundays and holidays. In addition board, lodging and transportation were required to be furnished by the employer, and Mehline’s pay was to begin upon his departure from Seattle and terminate- upon his return to that port. Pursuant to this, and apparently a supplemental, contract between him and San Juan, Mehline worked as a carpenter at the cannery of that company at Uganik Bay until July 6th, when he was transferred to the herring reduction plant of the Uganik Fisheries, Inc., across the bay. Between July 6th and August 3rd he worked on three of the five Sundays and in addition put in twenty-four hours’ overtime. On Sunday, August 3rd, there being no work for the carpenters, Mehline with other employees proceeded by a rowboat belonging to a fellow-employee to the plant of the San Juan Fishing and Packing Co., where he formerly worked, to buy some work clothes and ascertain if a combination square, ordered some weeks before, had arrived. When lie stepped out of the boat to the float maintained by San Juan, he slipped and fell, breaking a wrist.

Mehline filed a claim for compensation against “Uganik Fisheries, Inc., a subsidiary of San Juan Fishing and Packing Co.” The Board found that both plants were run by the superintendent of San Juan, and that the latter company handled and approved all time and payroll records in its own name and maintained the only commissary at which clothing and tools could be obtained, and concluded upon this and other facts found that the injury arose out of and was sustained in the course of Mehline’s employment because the trip was made for the “concurrent benefit of Uganik and Mehline” and also because it occurred upon “adjacent premises.”

The finding that the trip was made for the concurrent benefit of both appears to rest, so far as benefit to the employer is concerned, on the proposition that where the ■ [246]*246employee on his day off makes a trip to a store to obtain articles with which he is required to supply himself in order to do his work, the trip is for the employer’s benefit. While it may be that anything the employee does for his comfort or to maintain himself will ultimately benefit the employer in a remote sense, manifestly 'the benefit must be direct and immediate. If the employer were required to supply work clothes and tools and had dispatched an employee to a distant store to buy them, any injury received' in the store or en route would clearly be one received in the course of his employment. And it would not be necessary to invoke the adjacent premises doctrine. Here it appears that the employer was not required to furnish carpenters with clothes or tools, and since Mehline had been seasonally employed in the same capacity in Alaska since 1921, it may be presumed that he supplied himself with these articles when he left Seattle and that the need for further clothing and the square would not in any event occur so suddenly as to become an emergency interrupting his work and requiring him to make the trip during working hours for the purpose of replacing them.

The Board’s conclusion that the trip was made partly for the benefit of the employee also is based on the finding that the trip was made for recreation as well.

The test to be applied in determining whether a trip is the employer’s or employee’s is that laid down by Justice Cardozo in the matter of Marks’ Dependents v. Gray, 251 N.Y. 90, 167 N.E. 181, 182, as follows:

“A servant in New York informs his master that he is going to spend a holiday in Philadelphia, or perhaps at a distant place, at San Francisco or at'Paris. The master asks him while he is there to visit a delinquent debtor and demand payment of a debt. The trip to Philadelphia, the journey to San Francisco or to Paris, is not a part of the employment. A different question would arise if performance of the [247]*247service were to occasion a detour, and in the course of such detour the injuries were suffered. * * * ■

"We do not say that service to the employer must be the sole cause of the journey, but at least it must be a concurrent cause. To establish liability, the inference must be permissible that the trip would have been made though the private errand had been canceled. * * * The test in brief is this: If the work of the employee creates the necessity for travel, he is in the course of his employment, though he is serving at the same time some purpose of his own. * * * If, however, the work has had no part in creating the necessity for travel, if the journey would have gone forward though the business errand had been dropped, and would have been canceled upon failure of the private purpose, though the business errand was undone, the travel is then personal, and personal the risk.”

Here, as has been seen, not only did the employee have no errand to perform for the employer but it does not appear that the employer even knew that Mehline was going to make such a trip. Tested by the rule declared by Justice Cardozo, the conclusion that Mehline’s trip to the commissary was for the benefit of the employer is erroneous. Industrial Commission of Ohio v. Ahern, 119 Ohio St. 41, 162 N.E. 272, 59 A.L.R. 367; Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Ratcliff, Tex. Civ.App., 54 S.W.2d 223; Mulligan v. Oakes, 128 Conn. 488, 23 A.2d 870; Barragar v. Industrial Commission, 205 Wis. 550, 238 N.W. 368, 78 A.L.R. 679.

The argument based on the proposition that Uganik is a mere subsidiary of San Juan seems illogical and difficult to follow, and its materiality is not perceived. Assuming that it is a subsidiary, the answer is that the proceeding for compensation was not brought against San Juan and that, even so, the liability of an employer does not extend to any other plant than the one in which the employee is employed unless he is at the other plant on his employer’s business or as an incident of his employment, and in such circumstances [248]*248it would obviously be quite immaterial who owned or op-r erated the plant at which the injury was received. The relationship between Uganik and San Juan would, therefore, seem to be wholly without significance.

Although the finding of the Board that Mehline was “virtually” subject to call falls short of finding that he was subj ect to call at all times, yet it appears to be the basis for the conclusion that the injury was sustained in the course of the employment. Aside from the fact that there is no evidence to support such a finding, it clearly appears that his employment did not differ from that of any person employed at a monthly salary with fixed hours who is subject to call in emergency or allowed to work overtime when there is any extra work to be done.

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Bluebook (online)
12 Alaska 242, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/uganik-fisheries-inc-v-alaska-industrial-board-akd-1949.