Larson v. Industrial Accident Commission

WASTE, J.

Four proceedings in

certiorari

were initiated in this court by the above petitioners—an employer and his insurance carrier—to annul awards made by the Industrial Accident Commission. The employer, Erie Larson, owns and operates a large grain ranch, some eight or ten miles from the town of Stratford, in Kings County, on which he maintained bunkhouses for the comfort and accommodation of his workmen. On the evening of February 4, 1923, at about 5:30 o’clock, a number of the employees were in one of these bunkhouses, in which a fire was burning in a wood stove used for heating the place. For the purpose of reviving the fire, the camp choreman, Joe Smith, poured coal-oil into the stove from a five-gallon can. An explosion resulted which set fire to the bunkhouse. Smith and the foreman of the ranch, August Stevens, were burned to death. Cecil Miracle, Walter J. Bohn, and Clyde English, employees on the ranch, were more or less severely burned. Application was filed with the respondent Industrial Accident Commission by the widow of Stevens for a death benefit, which was granted. Claims of Miracle, English, and Bohn were also filed, and resulted in an award in favor of each of the three employees. The applications

[409]

were considered together by the Commission, and the four proceedings now before this court will be considered as one.

Petitioners’ principal contention is that the accident resulting in the death of Stevens, and the injuries to the other applicants for compensation, was not due to an industrial hazard, and therefore does not fall within the provisions of section 6a of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. It is, of course, a fundamental doctrine that it was not intended by the compensation act that an employer who comes within its provisions shall be the insurer of his employee at all times during the . period of the employment, but is liable for compensation only when the injury occurs to the employee while performing some act for the employer in the course of his employment, or is doing something that is incidental thereto. There must be some connection between the injury and the employment other than the mere fact that the employment brought the injured party to the place of injury. There must be a causal connection between the employment and the injury which had its origin in a risk connected with the employment, and flowed from that source as a rational and natural consequence.