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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 9 > Issue 8 (1911)

 

Abstract

In the recent case of Ives v. South Buffalo Railway Company the New York Court of Appeals annulled upon constitutional grounds, the so-called Wainwright Workmen's Compensation Law which sought to impose upon employers in certain specified extra-hazardous occupations a limited liability in cases of injuries to their employees regardless of the fact as to whether the negligence of the latter might have contributed to the injury or whether the risk had been well understood and assumed. The act did not abolish or modify the common law liability of the employer in cases where contributory negligence or assumption of risk could not be pleaded or relied upon. It did, however, provide that the employee or his next of kin must in all cases make an election of the remedy he sought within a reasonable time after the accident, and that a report to the common law remedy, even though unsuccessful, would be a bar to the relief provided by the statute, and in like manner a resort to the relief, afforded by the statute would amount to a waiver of the common law right. This statute the court held to be unconstitutional, not because of its unreasonableness or lack of economic necessity, but because of its revolutionary nature. The judges assumed and held that the standards of social responsibility which were recognized and enforced at the time of the adoption of our state and federal constitutions were perpetual unless changed by constitutional amendment, and that our constitutions have forever guaranteed that there shall be no civil or criminal liability where there is no breach of a positive duty. "When our constitutions were adopted," the opinion said, "it was the law of the land that no man who was without fault or negligence could be held liable in damages for injuries sustained by another. Under our form of government courts must regard all economic, philosophical and moral theories, however attractive and desirable they may be, as subordinate to the primary question whether they can be molded into statutes without infringing upon the spirit of our written constitutions. The right of property rests not upon philosophical or scientific speculations nor upon the commendable impulses of benevolence or charity, nor yet upon the dictates of natural justice. The right has its foundation in the fundamental law. The statute judged by our common law standard is plainly revolutionary. This is a liability unknown to the common law and we think it plainly constitutes a deprivation of liberty and property under the federal and state constitutions.

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