Latest Important Cases The New York Workmen’s Compensation Act Declared Unconstitutional
workmen’s Compensation.
Em
ployer Cannot be Made Liable in Absence of Fault —— Due Process of Law -——Limits of the Police Power N. Y.
N
Ives v. South Buflalo
Railway
Company,1 decided March 24, the New York Court of Appeals unanimously
held the compulsory workmen’s com pensation act of New York (article 140 of the Labor Law, being chapter 674, Laws of 1910) unconstitutional.
tion making the employer’s fault no longer an element of the employee's
right of action carried with it the abrogation of the doctrines of common
employment, contributory negligence and assumption of risks. “There can be no doubt that the first two of these are subjects clearly and fully within the scope of legislative power. . . . . These doctrines, for they are nothing more, may be regulated or even abol
ished.I This is true to a limited extent
The statute in question applies to specified dangerous employments, and gives the employee the right to recover a fixed scale of compensation for all personal injuries, without proof of negligence on the part of the employer,
which are not caused "in whole or in part by the serious and wilful mis conduct of the workman." Werner, ]., who wrote the opinion,
began by giving a brief review of the
as to the assumption of risk by the
employee.
In the Labor Law and the
Employers’ Liability Act, which define
the risks assumed by the employee, there are many provisions which cast upon the employer a great variety of
duties and burdens unknown to the common law. These can doubtless be still further multiplied and extended to the point where they deprive the em
ployer of rights guaranteed to him by circumstances under which the Wain wright law came to be enacted, and of some of the arguments of the Wain
our Constitutions, and there, of course,
regard all economic, philosophical and
they must stop." Constitutional. objections to the act based on limitations of the reserved power to alter or amend corporate
moral theories, attractive and desirable
charters, the alleged unfair classifica
though they may be, as subordinate to the primary question whether they can be moulded into statutes without infringing upon the letter or spirit of our written constitutions." The Court then said that an innova
tion of employments, right to jury trial,
wright commission.
"Under our form
of government, however, courts must
' Reported in 45 New York Law Journal 23. 41 (Apr. 34), 43 Chicago Legal New: 273 (Apr. 8).
were
then
considered,
and
brushed
aside as either not tenable or not ' While the modifimtion of the contributory negligence rule is within the legislative power, its complete abolition would carry with it such a far reaching transformation of the law of negligence, and would so alter the situation of existing rights of action. that it may be questioned whether the Court realized the full import of this dictum. —Ed.
