Commercial Insurance v. Superior Court

TAYLOR, J. Petitioners seek a writ of prohibition to restrain respondent superior court from further proceedings in this action on the ground that the superior court has no jurisdiction of the subject matter, the employee’s remedy being exclusively federal.

[322]It appears from the complaint filed in the lower court and the exhibits attached thereto that petitioners insured the liability of the employer, Morrison-Knudsen Company, Inc., for compensation arising under 42 U.S.C., sections 1651-1654, the Defense Bases Act,1 for an illness of the employee, William Bahner, contracted in the course of employment on a defense base of the United States at Teheran, Iran. The employee was totally disabled as the result of post infectious myelitis from a systemic virus infection. On June 23, 1964, he received an award under the said compensation act which required petitioners to pay to the employee the sum of $70 a week as long as he remained disabled, the sum of $300 a month to his wife for her services as an attendant as long as such services were necessary, and “that the defendants shall provide the claimant with such treatment as is necessary to alleviate the illness from which he is suffering. ’ ’

On August 7,1968, the employee instituted action No. 594294 against petitioners-insurance carriers in the Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the City and County of San Francisco, seeking $150,000 in general damages and $1,000,000 in punitive damages for a ruptured spleen and other injuries suffered by the employee on August 10, 1967, in a fall in his bathtub alleged to have been caused by the failure of petitioners to provide the employee with safety handholds for his bathtub prescribed by his physician, of which prescription the petitioners had been notified by the employee’s doctor on May 8, 1967. The complaint is in three counts alleging (1) breach of the contract and compensation order and award; (2) negligent failure to provide reasonable and necessary medical treatment; and (3) wilful and malicious failure to comply with the compensation order and award and the doctor ’s order.

Petitioners demurred to the complaint on the sole ground that the court had no jurisdiction of the subject matter of the action. The superior court overruled the demurrer and petitioners filed their petition for alternative writ of prohibition in this court. There can be no question of the propriety of the proceedings here instituted (State Comp. Ins. Fund v. Superior Court, 237 Cal.App.2d 416 [46 Cal.Rptr. 891]).