Workmen’s Compensation Act provision that third party whose negligence is responsible, in part, for injury suffered by employee protected by Act, may not, in suit brought by employee against him, join employer as additional defendant creates exception to general right to contribution from joint tort-feasors and prevents third party from otherwise seeking contribution or indemnity from employer, even though employer’s own negligence may have been the primary cause of the injury
How later courts described this case
- Workmen’s Compensation Act provision that third party whose negligence is responsible, in part, for injury suffered by employee protected by Act, may not, in suit brought by employee against him, join employer as additional defendant creates exception to general right to contribution from joint tort-feasors and prevents third party from otherwise seeking contribution or indemnity from employer, even though employer’s own negligence may have been the primary cause of the injury
- refraining from determining the extent of an employer’s subrogation rights in the context of a constitutional challenge to the substantive bar to contribution under section 303(b)
- upholding constitutionality of section 303 and affirming dismissal of third-party complaint seeking to join employer as additional defendant
- upholding classification exempting employers from joinder by third party defendants in Workmen’s Compensation suits
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
*524 LARSEN, Justice,
concurring.
Article I, Section 11 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides: “All courts shall be open: and every man for an injury done him in his land, goods, person or reputation shall have remedy by due course of law, and right and justice without sale, denial or delay. . . .” Limitations to one’s access to the courts are unconstitutional. However, for historical and humane reasons, this Court in prior decisions has permitted the substitution of the Workmen’s Compensation law for one’s access to the courts. And since the Majority’s limitation, (bar of a third party’s joinder of an employer) is within the scope of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, I join in the result of the majority with the condition that the employer’s right to subrogation is not automatic. The employer must in some judicial proceedings establish its freedom from fault in order to be subrogated.