Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1916 [PAGE 770]

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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

[ J u l y 14,

[Judge Harker's Opinion.] „ , , r July S, 1915. President Edmund J. James,, University of Illinois. MY DEAR PRESIDENT JAMES : Complying with your request that I should express my views in writing concerning the liability of the University to University employees, students, and others, I am pleased to submit to you the following: No liability for negligence is cast upon the University by reason of any rule at common law, any provision of the original charter, or by any provision contained in any amendment to the charter, or legislation directly applying to the University. If there is now any liability for injuries sustained by employees for negligence, it must be by virtue of the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1913. That act is rather a crude piece of legislation, and some provisions have already been held unconstitutional by our Supreme Court. In view of the fact that the legislation is entirely new and is crude in some of its provisions, it is a little difficult to determine exactly what the obligations of the University are to its employees. The first section provides "That any employer in this State may elect to provide and pay compensation for accidental injuries sustained by any employee arising out of and in the course of the employment according to the provisions of this act, and thereby relieve himself from any liability for the recovery of damages, except as herein provided." The section also provides that election shall be accomplished by the employer filing notice of such election with the Industrial Board. The Industrial Board is a body of three men appointed by the Governor of the State to administer the provisions of the act. An employer who has elected to come within the provisions of the act shall remain therein until the 1st of the following January and thereafter unless he shall, sixty days prior to that date, file notice with the Industrial Board of his election to withdraw from the act and post notices of his withdrawal. The second section of the act provides that every employer engaged in any of the occupations, enterprises, or businesses enumerated below shall be conclusively presumed to have filed notice of his election unless he shall file a notice in writing to the contrary, and shall also furnish his employees, personally, or post at a conspicuous place in his plant, copy of his notice to provide and pay compensation, etc.: " 1 . The building, maintaining, repairing, or demolishing of any structure; 2. Construction, excavating, or electrical work; 3. Carriage by land or water and loading or unloading in connection therewith; 4. The operation of any warehouse or general or terminal storehouse; 5. Mining, surface mining, or quarrying; 6. Any enterprise in which explosive materials are manufactured, handled, or used in dangerous quantities; 7. In any enterprise wherein molten metal, or explosive or injurious gases or vapors or inflammable vapors or fluids or corrosive acids are manufactured, used, generated, stored, or conveyed in dangerous quantities; 8. In any enterprise in which statutory or municipal ordinance regulations are now or shall hereafter be imposed for the regulation, guarding, use, or the placing of machinery or appliances, or for the protection and safeguarding of the employees or the public therein; each of which occupations, enterprises, or businesses are hereby declared to be extra-hazardous." There has been considerable difference of opinion as to the meaning which should be attached to the words "employer engaged in any of the following occupations, enterprises, or businesses." When the act first went into effect, there were a number of lawyers who were of the opinion that anyone engaged in a business that required him to do any of the things mentioned in the eight particular kinds of'work was within the act without having filed an election as provided in section 1. In other words, it was maintained by some that a farmer or merchant, or the keeper of a hotel who had occasion in his business to do any of the things enumerated within the eight lines mentioned, came within the provisions of the act. I have been informed that the Attorney General's office once promulgated such an opinion. Circuit judges in different parts of the State, however, held in case of farmers and merchants that they were not within the intention of the Legislature. In other words, they held that in order to bring an employer within the provisions of the act, his occupation, enterprise, or business would have to be extra-hazardous, and the main occupation or business as specified in section 3 of the act. Perhaps I cannot give you a better understanding of my views concerning the liability of the University as an employer than by stating our points of contention in the case of Walter J. North, Administrator of the estate of James W. North v. The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, now pending in the First Appellate Court District. James W. North, employed as a Curator at the College of Medicine, at a salary of $70 per month, came to his death on the 5th of December, 1913, by falling through an elevator shaftway from the fourth floor of the Medical College Building to the basement. Among the duties of North was that of moving cadavers from floor to floor. The evidence taken at the coroner's inquest and also upon the trial before the Arbitration Committee of the Industrial Board showed that it was the custom of North to receive cadavers from the expressman in the basement, at the alley, and distribute them as needed on the different floors. When the school was through with the cadavers, they were gathered up and taken by the Curator, by way of the elevator, to the alley, where they were again taken by the expressman. 'No one was present when North met his death. He was found at the bottom of the elevator shaftway, dead, with a table and a cadaver over him. The elevator was flush with the fifth floor. The door opening into the shaftway at the fourth floor was open. The supposition is that he ran the elevator to the fifth floor, and then engaged in gathering together cadavers that had been used, for the purpose of taking them to the basement. In his work he went to the fourth floor, and .in getting a cadaver ready, moved to the shaftway, and forgetting that he had left the elevator at the fifth floor, opened the door and stepped into the shaftway.