CHAPTER I WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION ACTS IN GENERAL Section FORBRARY 1-5. Article I.-History, purpose and scope. The trend of state legislation indicates a rapid increase in sentiment favorable to those principles which underlie the Workmen's Compensation Acts. While the features of these acts are patterned largely after the English Act, the compensation idea seems to have originated in Germany. The economic loss from vocational disease, industrial accidents, old age, and nonemployment, created in the German States, prior to the days of the Empire, a sentiment favorable to some plan of compensation, but the credit for crystallizing this sentiment into workable laws rests with Bismarck. From the enactment of a sick insurance statute in Germany in 1883, the idea of compensation based on risks arising out of the business and impairment of earning capacity spread to other European countries, and finally to the United States. The federal government, 32 states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Canal Zone now have measures for the relief of injured workmen which are patterned after either the German insurance, or the English com pensation plan, or both.1 In consequence of the common origin of these Acts, they bear a close resemblance to each other in their essential features. The basic German insurance plan and English compensation plan seek the same ultimate end, though by somewhat different means, and the term "workmen's compensation" is sufficiently comprehensive for all practical purposes to include both. 1 Compensation laws are in force in the following states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The first Kentucky law was declared unconstitutional, and the present law became effective August 1, 1916. The law passed by the Idaho Legislature was vetoed by the Governor. The states above named have approximately 75 per cent. of the population and nearly 85 per cent. of the workmen engaged in manufacturing in the continental United States. The original New York Act, enacted in 1910 (Labor Law [Laws 1910, c. 674] art. 14a), was modeled after the English Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897. Ives v. South Buffalo Ry. Co., 201 N. Y. 271, 94 N. E. 431, 34 L. R. A. (N. S.) 162, Ann. Cas. 1912B, 156. 2 Appeal of Hotel Bond Co., 89 Conn. 143, 93 Atl. 245; Mackin v. Detroit Timkin Axle Co., 187 Mich. 8, 153 N. W. 49; State v. Industrial Commission, 92 Ohio St. 434, 111 N. E. 299. They are the expression of widely prevalent sentiments which have exerted a compelling influence on legislation in other countries as well as in the United States. Western Indemnity Co. v. Pillsbury, 170 Cal. 686, 151 Pac. 398. "Confronted with a legislative history covering more than 30 years and extending to practically all of Europe, to many of the European dependencies, and to more than one-half of the United States, the members of the Legislative Assembly of 1915 must be credited with an understanding of compensation measures as they were generally understood at that time, and with an intention to employ terms appropriate to such measures as they were generally employed under like circumstances." Lewis and Clark County v. Industrial Acc. Board (Mont.) 155 Pac. 268. 3 Id. The Act should be designated and referred to as the "Workmen's Compensation Act," not as the "Employers' Liability Act," though it has some of the § 2. Theory, purpose, and scope The proper administration of Workmen's Compensation Acts. necessitates an appreciation of the legislative purpose to abolish the common-law system relating to injuries to employés as inadequate to meet modern conditions and conceptions of moral obligations," and substitute therefor a system based on a high conception of 4 characteristics of both. Gregutis v. Waclark Wire Works, 86 N. J. Law, 610, 92 Atl. 354. 4 It was the intention of the Legislature of New York to supersede "rules of law governing legal liability" which were stated by Governor Hughes to "offend the common sense of fairness," and to carry out the recommendation of the Wainwright Commission of 1909 that the state should "establish a new system of compensation for accidents to workmen." In re Rheinwald, 168 App. Div. 425, 153 N. Y. Supp. 598. All the Compensation Acts, whether elective or compulsory, rest on the notion that the common-law remedy by action involves intolerable delay and great economic waste, gives inadequate relief, operates unequally, and that, whether viewed from the standpoint of the employer or that of the employé, it is inequitable and unsuited to the conditions of modern industry. Western Indemnity Co. v. Pillsbury, 170 Cal. 686, 151 Pac. 398. * In an opinion by Judge Johnson, in the case of State ex rel. v. Creamer, 85 Ohio St. 349, 386, 97 N. E. 602, 603, 39 L. R. A. (N. S.) 694, construing the original Ohio Act, the court says of the Act: "It provides a plan of compensation for injuries * resulting from accidents to employés. The system, which has been followed in this country, of dealing with accidents in industrial pursuits, is wholly unsound. enormous waste under the present system, and sonal injuries by employé against employer no longer furnishes a real and practical remedy, annoys and harasses both, and does not meet the economic and social problem which has resulted from modern industrialism." * There has been the action for per The purpose of the Act is to substitute a method of accident insurance in place of the common-law rights and liabilities for substantially all employés except domestic servants, farm laborers, and masters of and seamen on vessels engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, and those whose employment is casual or not in the usual course of trade, business, or employment of the employer, and probably those subject to the federal Employers' Liability Act (Act April 22, 1908, c. 149, 35 Stat. 65 [U. S. Comp. St. 1913, §§ 8657-8665]). It was a humane measure enacted in response to a strong public sentiment that the remedies afforded by actions of tort at common law and under the state Employers' Liability Act had failed to accomplish that measure of pro man's obligation to his fellow man," a system recognizing every personal loss to an employé, which is not self-inflicted, as an element tection against injuries and in case of accident which should be afforded to the workman. Young v. Duncan, 218 Mass. 346, 106 N. E. 1. The originators of the Workmen's Compensation Acts believed that they would lessen crime. Some of the considerations behind them were economic: The difficulty and hardship involved in proving the workman's case, the great waste in procuring a recovery, the delay in obtaining the relief, the uncertainty oftentimes in determining the cause of the accident, the vastly increased dangers, and the impossibility of personal supervision by the employer, under modern conditions of employment, and the necessity of the workman accepting employment under conditions of increased danger or suffering loss of livelihood. Some were moral: The prevention of the tendency of some workmen to press unfounded claims, and the tendency of some employers to defend by means of questionable fairness. Appeal of Hotel Bond Co., 89 Conn. 143, 93 Atl. 245. • The paramount object of the diverse workmen's compensation enactments which have been adopted by several of the states of the Union and in foreign countries has been the enactment of what has been claimed to be more just and humane laws to take the place of the common-law remedy for the compensation of workmen for accidental injuries received in the course of their employment, by the taking away and removal of certain defenses in that class of cases. Adams v. Acme White Lead & Color Wks., 182 Mich. 157, 148 N. W. 485, L. R. A. 1916A, 282. Though the Ohio Act had in view the establishment of an insurance fund, it was passed primarily to protect the life and limb of the employé. McWeeny v. Standard Boiler & Plate Co. (D. C.) 210 Fed. 507, affirmed 218 Fed. 361, 134 C. C. A. 169. As said by Judge Fullerton: "Theoretically, of course, the employer and employé, on entering into a contract by which the one engages the services of the other, stand on the same plane, but in practice, as it is well known, this ideal condition very seldom exists. Greed and sagacity on the one side, and necessity and incapacity on the other, sometimes lead to contracts that create conditions little short of peonage, and our own reports abound with instances where men have been induced to work in situations so dangerous to life and limb that the wonder is not that some of them were injured, but rather that any of them escaped injury. Indeed, it is a common thing for an employer, in defense of an action of damages brought by his employé for injury received in such a situation, to urge that the dangers of the place were so obvious and apparent that the employé was guilty of contributory negligence for working therein. These conditions, we think, authorize the interference of the Legislature. The obligation of the employé to accept the |