# Hazy v. Pittsburgh Coal Co.

> Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · March 13, 1956 · 384 Pa. 316

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9717053

## Case

- **Full name:** Hyzy, Appellant, v. Pittsburgh Coal Company
- **Court:** Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
- **Decided:** March 13, 1956
- **Citations:** 384 Pa. 316; 121 A.2d 85
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Musmanno
- **Judges:** Steen, Stearns, Jones, Bell, Chidsey, Musmanno, Arnold, Stern
- **Cited by:** 17 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9717053

## Opinion text

*320 Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Musmanno:
Joseph E. Hyzy, the deceased husband of the plaintiff, worked in the coal mine of the defendant Pittsburgh Coal Company as motorman of a Joy-loading machine. On January 8, 1953, he was crushed to death by a roof-fall and cave-in. In an action for damages, the Administratrix of his estate charged the defendant with negligence: “(a) In assigning decedent to work under an untimbered, loose, and deteriorated roof, in violation of the Mine Safety Acts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, forbidding assignments of work in hazardous areas, (b) In knowingly directing and permitting the operation of a bull-dozing machine in a section where no timbering or adequate timbering were installed to support the loose and danger roof. ... (e) In wilfully, wantonly and negligently instructing decedent to operate the said bull-dozing machine in the area in violation of law and to his great hazard, injury and death.”
Section 873 of the Bituminous Coal Mines Law (1911, June 9, P. L. 756), 52 PS provides: “The mine foreman shall direct and see that every working place is properly secured by props or timbers, and shall see that no person is directed or permitted to work in an unsafe, place, unless it be for the purpose of making it safe.”
Section 1341 of the same Act makes violation of the Act a misdemeanor.
The lower Court held, and the majority of this Court affirms, that the plaintiff may not recover in a trespass action as her remedy is limited to the provisions of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. In the case of King v. Darlington, 284 Pa. 277, 280 , this Court held that “the Workmen’s Compensation Act does not debar an action of trespass, where the injury results from *321 the employer’s violation of a statutory command: Lincoln v. National Tube Co., 268 Pa. 504 .” 1
In Lincoln v. National Tube Co., 268 Pa. 504 , this Court allowed a recovery where a minor employee was injured when he was assigned to operate a hoisting machine in express violation of a statute. It was argued by the employer there that it was liable only under the Workmen’s Compensation Act because the Act applied to “those employers who ‘shall by agreement, either expressed or implied . . . accept the provisions’ thereof.” But we held that: “¡Since no legal contract could be made by or for the minor to do this kind of work, and as such contract could not be legally ‘renewed or extended by mutual consent, expressed or implied,’ it is clear the workmen’s compensation law does not cover the case.” 2
If the employer in the case at bar ordered the decedent to work in an area of the mine which, under the Mine Safety Law, was so dangerous as to be prohibited territory, the employer is responsible in trespass as much as where an employer orders a minor to work at prohibited machinery. In Walcofski v. Lehigh Val. Coal Co., 278 Pa. 84, 88 , this Court denied compensation to a claimant who of his own volition entered into an area of the mine he was ordered to avoid. Although barring recovery, we laid down rules there which apply to employers as well as to employees: “There can be no legal excuse for failure to obey an absolute statutory requirement ... We have consistently followed a public policy announced long ago by this court; it will not aid a man who grounds his cause on an immoral or il *322 legal act . . . And as we have unhesitatingly held employers to a strict rule for failure to obey social welfare acts in the interest of safety to other workmen, so also the law as it relates to employees mining coal under these circumstances must be enforced . . .”
Although it is generally assumed that the Workmen’s - Compensation Law assures compensation to injured workmen regardless of the manner in which their injuries were incurred, the appellate courts have often denied recovery on the ground that the claimant was violating some law at the time of his accident. In Yowkoski v. Hudson Coal Co., 159 Pa. Superior Ct. 256 , the claimant was refused compensation because at the time of the mishap he was using matches in violation of Rule 10, Art. XII of the Pennsylvania Anthracite Mining Law of June 2, 1891. In the case of Beshenick v. Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Corp., 110 Pa. Superior Ct. 156 , it was held that the claimant could not recover when he violated a law, even though the violation did not amount to a misdemeanor. In Demuzzio v. Lattimer Coal Corporation, 157 Pa. Superior Ct. 459 , compensation was disallowed because the decedent was working in that part of the mine “where he was ordered not to work.” In Dickey v. Pittsburgh & Lake Erie R.R. Co., 297 Pa. 172 , no compensation was permitted because the decedent used a short cut, this Court saying: “Where an employee violates a positive rule as to entering forbidden parts of the owner’s premises about which he has no duty to perform, or disobeys instructions against starting machinery or other dangerous agencies with which his work is not connected, and with which he has no business, and an injury results, he not only violates the orders of his employer, but is in the position of a trespasser, who without right authority or permission, enters forbidden ground.”
*323 It is not likely that the Legislature, in passing the Workmen’s Compensation Act, intended to bar from compensation employees who violate safety laws and yet immunize employers from liability in trespass actions when they ignore the same safety laws. If violation of a safety law drives the claimant into an area not covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Law, a disregarding of statutory requirements by the employer should and must remove from him the protecting umbrella of that same law. The Superior Court well said in the case of Morell v. B. & S. & C. Co., 103 Pa. Superior Ct. 316 , 321: “The defendant should not be permitted to play fast and loose with the rules — condone their infraction by the officials charged with their enforcement and then set them up as a bar against recovery of compensation by the dependents of an employe killed while traveling from his work in a manner to which they had given their assent and approval.”
Boal v. Electric Storage Battery Co., 98 F. 2nd 815, is another case covering a situation where the Workmen’s Compensation Act does not apply, despite the employer-employee relationship.
Italics throughout, mine.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9717053. Public record. Not legal advice.