O'Donnell v. Director General

Citations

• 273 Pa. 375
• 117 A. 82
• 1922 Pa. LEXIS 581

Syllabus

<p>Workmen’s compensation — Railroads—Interstate commerce — Interstate train — Break in continuity of service.</p> <p>1. Where intrastate and interstate actions are mingled, or at times alternate, there is no separation; the interstate feature predominates and by it must the question be judged.</p> <p>2. Employment follows interstate transportation, and begins when the workman on a carrier’s premises makes a forward move to serve in that traffic or employment, and ends only after he has completely dissociated himself therefrom.</p> <p>3. If there be an assertion of the claim or remedy growing out of an occurrence in which there are constituents of interstate commerce, the burden of explanation and avoidance is on him who asserts the claim or remedy, not on the railroad company to which it is directed.</p> <p>4. Where an engineer is fatally injured while taking an engine from one point in the state to another, and it appears that the engine in question was to arrive at the second point about ten o’clock in the morning, and was definitely assigned to an interstate passenger train at five o’clock in the afternoon, and it also appeared that the engineer after delivering the engine at the second point was to assist in moving with another engine an interstate freight train, the engineer at the time of his injury was engaged in interstate commerce.</p> <p>5. The fact that during the interval from ten o’clock in the morning to five o’clock in the afternoon, the engine in question might possibly be assigned to other work, is immaterial.</p> <p>Workmen’s compensation — Railroads — Interstate commerce — Contractual relations under state laws superseded by Federal Act.</p> <p>6. The Federal Employers’ Liability Act excludes the jurisdiction of state workmen’s compensation acts in all matters relating to interstate commerce, including all the direct and indirect effects thereof, whether these, when applicable, create contractual relations or otherwise.</p> <p>7. It is beyond the