Dawson v. Hatfield Wire & Cable Co.

Wbinteaub, C. J.

(concurring). I agree with the result reached in the majority opinion but I would rest it upon another ground.

The Workmen’s Compensation Act is concerned with hard realities. One is the plight of the dependents of an employee whose death is compensable. The design of the statute is to replace the decedent’s obligation, cut short by the compensable event, with the obligation of the employer to pay the statutory sums. We should not assume the Legislature intended to permit the employer to dispute a legal relationship the employee intentionally assumed and which the employee might well be estopped to question if he had lived and been minded so to do. See Tonti v. Chadwick, 1 N. J. 531, 537 (1949); Danes v. Smith, 30 N. J. Super. 292, 297 (App. Div. 1954). Here the deceased married the petitioner on a representation that he was free to do so. The marriage was a ceremonial one, celebrated in 1949, and the deceased lived with his wife until his death 16 years later. I would not permit the employer to challenge that relationship.

The statute speaks of a “wife” and I assume for present purposes that a de jure wife was intended. Nonetheless, upon that hypothesis, the reasonable objective would be to protect the employer from spurious claims that the em *199 ployee had a duty to provide for an alleged wife. But I would not assume that the Legislature, in requiring a de jure relationship, intended thereby to enable the employer to rummage through the lives of the employee and the widow in search of some basis to challenge their ceremonial marriage. The law zealously guards a ceremonial marriage by surrounding it with a heavy presumption of legality. That solicitude repels the notion that strangers to the marriage should he permitted to attack it. An employer is not a party in interest in a marital relationship. To the employer the marital status of an employee is merely a fortuitous fact. The employer is no more entitled to question the legality of a ceremonial marriage than he would be to challenge the paternity of a child born during the employee’s marriage, or the validity of a divorce the employee or his wife had obtained prior to their marriage. See Weinberg v. Todd Shipyards, 97 N. J. Super. 289, 293 (App. Div. 1967). These matters do not become the employer’s proper concern merely because he could escape a dollar liability if he had standing to mount an attack.

The employer, of course, should be protected against multiple claims of widow dependency. The employer is liable to one widow and no more. As in any other case in which an obligor is not sure who of several is entitled to collect, the employer may resort to a proceeding in the nature of an interpleader in which the employer is a stakeholder and the contestants litigate their respective claims. To that end, an employer who seeks protection against multiple claims may implead the other potential claimant in the compensation proceeding if feasible and otherwise in an appropriate action in a judicial tribunal. But that is not the relief this employer seeks. Rather this employer wants to avoid payment to either woman by attacking a ceremonial marriage of the only one who presses a claim for dependency compensation. In my view, the employer lacks the necessary standing. Public policy dictates that answer.