Kaiser Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission

NOURSE, P. J.—

The petitioner seeks an annulment of the award of compensation to an employee who was injured during an altercation between an assistant foreman and a fellow employee.

[219]

The applicant, Mollie Pruitt, was a negro woman employed as a tank sealer at petitioner’s shipbuilding plant located at Richmond. She worked in a gang composed of two white women, one colored, and four others whose race and color were not identified. All members of the gang were instructed to take orders only from their leaderman. A white man, Pay Jones, was an assistant labor foreman of the plant, who was not connected with this gang and had no authority over it. On the day in question Jones, in a drunken condition, came to the place where the gang was working and engaged in making love to Daisy, one of the white women. He ordered Willa Mae, one of the colored women, to leave the place and work in some other part of the ship. She refused and an altercation arose. He then took Daisy to the hold of the ship where they remained for more than an hour.

In the meantime the two colored women and one of the white women went to the rest room where they discussed Jones’ order to Willa Mae. Unknown to them Mrs. Jones was present, and having learned of her husband’s conduct with Daisy, she set out to find him. Husband and wife later came to the place where applicant was working and he demanded that he be told who had given the information to his wife. The colored women told him that all they had discussed in Mrs. Jones’ presence was his order to Willa Mae to leave the gang. Mrs. Jones told him that a white woman told her about his affair with Daisy. Jones threatened to beat the one who told. Willa Mae insisted that she had talked only about his order to her. Without further provocation Jones started to beat Willa Mae. He knocked her to the floor and was kicking her when the applicant pleaded with him not to hurt the woman. He then turned on her and struck her over the eye with a steel helmet. The leaderman interfered and was also beaten.

The propriety of the award rests upon the question whether the injuries inflicted upon the applicant arose out of, and in the course of, her employment. In support of the award the commission found that the injuries to the applicant occurred “in the course of and arising out of her employment. ’ ’ This finding is amply supported by the evidence and must be sustained unless it can be said as a matter of law that when an employee goes to the protection of a fellow employee while both are engaged in the course of their employment he