Arizona Copper Company v. Hammer Same/Dissent McKenna

by Mahlon Pitney

United States Supreme Court

250 U.S. 400

Arizona Copper Company  v.  Hammer Same

 Argued: Jan. 25, 1918. --- Decided: Jan 28, 1918

Mr. Justice McKENNA dissenting.

I find myself unable to concur, yet reluctant to dissent. The case is of the kind that, once pronounced, will be a rule in like or cognate cases forever-indeed, may even be extended. It is said to rest on the cases sustaining the Workmen's Compensation Law of New York, 243 U.S. 203, 37 Sup. Ct. 247, 61 L. Ed. 667, L. R. A. 1917D, 1, Ann. Cas. 1917D, 629, and its associated cases in the same volume upholding like laws of other states. The present case certainly comes after those cases and has that symptom of being their sequence. They cannot be said to have been easy of judgment against the contentions and conservatism which opposed them, and there was, at least to me, no prophecy of their extent, and therefore to me the present case is a step beyond them. I hope it is something more than timidity, dread of the new, that makes me fear that it is a step from the deck to the sea-the metaphor suggests a peril in the consequences.

But let me in a more concrete way make application of this comment. I may assume that the purpose and principle and general extent of Workmen's Compensation Laws are known. I must rest on that assumption, for even an epitome of them or the reasons for them would unduly extend this dissent. The Arizona law has no resemblance to them. It is a direct charge of liability upon the employer for death or injury incurred in his employment, he being without fault. Its remedies are the ordinary legal remedies; its measure of relief, however, has in it something more than the ordinary measures of relief, certainly not those of the Compensation Laws, nor is it as considerate and guarded as they. If its validity, therefore, can be deduced from the cases explanatory of those laws, it can only be done by bringing its instances and theirs under the same generalization; that is, that it is competent for government to charge liability and exempt from responsibility according as one is employer or employe, there being no other circumstance than that relation. Of this there can be no disguise. It may be confused by argument and attempt at historical analogies and deductions, but to that comprehensive principle the case must come at last. All else is adventitious, and puts out of view the relation of the factors of production. It puts out of view that employers are as necessary to production as employes and subjects to peril the voluntary conduct of the former and leaves out of account as an element the voluntary conduct of the latter. In other words, there is a clear discrimination, a class distinction with its legal circumstances and, I may say, invidious circumstances, in view of some of the reasons adduced in its justification. And these effects cannot be concealed under any camouflage nor given the plausible and attractive gloss of public policy, justified by the different conditions of employer and employe. Unquestionably there is a difference-it constitutes the life of the relation. But the question is: Who shall compensate the injury that may result from the relation, voluntarily assumed by both, urged by their respective interests and a calculation of advantage? But I pass this discrimination and return to the law as a violation of the employer's rights considered absolutely and abstractly. It seems to me to be of the very foundation of right of the essence of liberty as it is of morals-to be free from liability if one is free from fault. It has heretofore been the sense of the law and the sense of the world, pervading the regulations of both, that there can be no punishment where there is no blame; and yet the court now by its decision erects the denial of these postulates of conduct into a principle of law and governmental pl icy. In other words, it is said to be a benefit to government to put the exact discharge of duty under the menace of penalty and invert the conceptions of makind of the relation of right and wrong action. If the legislation does not punish without fault what does it do? The question is pertinent. Consider what the employer does: He invests his money in productive enterprise mining, smelting, manufacturing, railroading-he engaged employes at their request and pays them the wages they demand; he takes all of the risks of the adventure. Now there is put upon him an immeasurable element that may make disaster inevitable. I find it difficult to answer the argument advanced to support or palliate this effect, or independently of it to justify the interference with rights. It is a certain impeachment of some rights to assume that they need justification, and a betrayal of them to make them a matter of controversy. There are precepts of constitutional law, as there are precepts of moral law, that reach the conviction of aphorisms and are immediately accepted by all who understand them, and comment is considered as confusing as unnecessary. I say this, not in dogmatism, but in expression of my vision of things, and I say it with deference to the contrary judgment of my Brethren of the majority.

Of course, reasons may to found for the violation of rights, advantage to somebody or something in that violation. Tyranny even may find pretexts, and seldom boldly bids its will avouch its acts, and certainly there can be no accusation of barefaced power in the Arizona law. Its motives and purposes are worthy, and it requires some resolution of duty to resist them. It must be seen, and is seen, however, that the difference between the position of employer and employe, simply considering the latter as economically weaker, is not a justification for the violation of the rights of the former, and that individual rights cannot be made to yield to philanthropy, and therefore the welfare of the government is brought forward and displayed. The law saves the government, is the comment, from the burden of paupers, its administration and peace from the disturbance of criminals. The answer, I think, is immediate. Government, certainly constitutional government, cannot afford to infringe, indeed, betrays its purpose if it infringes, a right of anybody upon money considerations or for ease in the exercise of its faculties.

But, granting there is something in the argument, what shall be the limits of its application? Will it extend the principle of the present case to nonhazardous employments? If not, why not? The Arizona law stops with certain occupations which it calls 'hazardous'; but it includes in the description 'manufacturing,' without qualifying words. In the New York Compensation Law passed on in New York Central Railroad v. White, 243 U.S. 203, 37 Sup. Ct. 247, 61 L. Ed. 667, L. R. A. 1917D, 1, Ann. Cas. 1917D, 629, there were 42 groups of hazardous occupations. In 243 U.S. 219, 37 Sup. Ct. 260, 61 L. Ed. 685, Ann. Cas. 1917D, 642, the court had quite a struggle with the provisions of the Washington Compensation Law, which was so far different from those of the other cases as to incur the dissent of members of the court. It is now, I think, of pertinent inquiry whether the quality of being hazardous is an inherent and necessary element of legality or a matter of legislative definition and policy. Besides, if there can be liability without fault in one occupation, and that can be a principle of legislation, why not in any other? Who is to determine the application, court or Legislature? If the latter, a court may not even express apprehension of its exercise, and yet it cannot put out of view the drift of events and in blind fatalism await their incidence when called upon to consider the legality of such exercise. We know things are in change-have changed-and a mark of it is that the drift of public opinion, and of legislation following opinion, is to alter the relation between empo yer and employe, and to give to the latter a particular distinction, relieve him from a responsibility which would seem to be, and which until lately it has been the sense of the world to be, as much upon him as upon his employer, not in dependence, not as a mark of subservience, but as an obligation of his freedom, and therefore, as a consequence, that where he has liberty of action he has responsibility for action. In a word, the drift of opinion and legislation now is to set labor apart and to withdraw it from its conditions, and from the action of economic forces and their consequences, give it immunity from the pitilessness of life. And there are appealing considerations for this drift of opinion and inevitable sympathy with it, as with many other conditions, but which the law cannot relieve by a sacrifice of constitutional rights. In what legislation the drift (it is persuasion in some) may culminate cannot now be predicted, but it is very certain that, whatever it be, the judgment now delivered will be cited to justify it. Will it not be said that, if one right of an employer can be made to give way, why not another? made a condition 'upon economic or other grounds' of his enterprise. Indeed, may not the question be made more general, and if in supposed benefit to a particular class, and through benefit to them to the public, there may be constraint upon or the imposition of burden upon one right of a citizen, why not upon another? There is, therefore, I think, menace in the present judgment to all rights, subjecting them unreservedly to conceptions of public policy. If, however, this general apprehension be not justified, there is threat enough in the judgment of the court to the interest of employers generally as a result of the difference in conditions.

A rather curious argument is used to support the Arizona law. It is said, in justification of its discrimination between employer and employe, that the employer may, in relief from it and rescue from its burdens, pass them to the consumers of his products, as he does or may do in the case of other expenses of his venture, and in the long run their incidence is, as it is said it should be, on the public, and that the Legislature in so considering was reasoning within constitutional bounds. There is attractive speciousness in the argument. The individual employer seems to be devested of grievance, and the problem the law presents to be one of economics and governmental policy-is a kind of taxation, an expense of government, the burden of which is properly laid upon the public, and over which a court can have but limited power.

If it is intended by the argument to express no more than a tendency, while it has no relevancy, I think, upon the validity of the law, there may be no danger in it. If it is intended to be erected into a principle, there is danger in it. It is certainly facile and comprehensive. What burden can be put upon industry or the activities of men that may not be justified by it?

Of course, there will be no production unless all of its costs be reimbursed by the price of the articles produced. And by costs, I mean as well the burdens of government as profit to the employer-his inducement to enterprise, and the wages of employes their inducement to labor. Without such reimbursement there will be no production, and cannot be beyond a certain extent and for a certain time; and there is no way to effect it but through the consuming PUBLIC. BUT RECOURSE TO SUCH CONSUMPTION as a rescuE from the law is not a justification for the law, and it is very doubtful if it had any conscious influence in the enactment of the law.

Indeed, in the present case what could have been its influence, and to what extent can it have an ameliorating effect? An employer in the indicated industries can have no relief except in the home market. If his products (where there are products) go beyond-go to other states-they will meet the competition of unburdened products. But this is obviou and needs no comment.

The CHIEF JUSTICE, Mr. Justice VAN DEVANTER and Mr. Justice McREYNOLDS concur in this dissent.

Notes