Knorr v. Central Railroad

Citations

• 268 Pa. 172
• 110 A. 797
• 1920 Pa. LEXIS 647

Syllabus

<p>Workmen’s compensation — Railroads—Master and servant — Employee traveling on pass to and from work — Breaking continuity of employment — Interstate commerce — Evidence—Burden of proof.</p> <p>1. A railroad employee who accepts and uses free transportation to and from his work, is not to he regarded as a passenger, but as an employee under his general employment, and the fact that he stopped for a short period on his way home, to transact some personal business of his own, temporarily suspending his employment, will not break the continuity of such employment when he again boards the train.</p> <p>2. A railroad fireman, called to work a train made up partly of cars shipped from points outside of the State, who, after such work has been completed, registers and checks out, and, after attending to some personal business, proceeds home on another train on which he has free transportation, and is accidentally killed while riding on a car of such train, is not engaged in interstate commerce at the time of his death, where he has been working under general employment.'</p> <p>3. Had he been injured after lie checked out and was in the act of leaving the yard or the premises where he had been working, it seems that the character of the employment he had just left would follow him as a necessary incident of the day’s work and partake of the character of that work as a whole, which was both interstate and intrastate, and in that case the company would not he liable.</p> <p>4. The interstate relation ceased when ho left the premises, and the general employment was then resumed.</p> <p>5. The character of the commerce a railroad’s employee is engaged in, is to bo determined by the work he was actually doing when injured.</p> <p>6. Whore a railroad employee is injured in the course of his employment, the burden is on his employer to show that the facts were controlled by the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (U. S. Comp. St., sections 8657-8065) which makes negligence the tes