Fuller v. Baltimore & Ohio Employes' Relief Ass'n

Stone, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an action brought by the plaintiff, Sarah A. Fuller, against the Baltimore and Ohio Employes’ Relief Association. She claims in her declaration that her son, Benjamin E. Fuller, was a member of the Baltimore and Ohio Relief Association and an employe of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, and while a member of the association and an employé of the company he was killed by an accident on said railroad. That by the constitution and by-laws of said association an employé who held the position that her son did, was entitled to the amount of $1,000 in case of his death, and that it was his privilege to designate the person to whom it was to be paid, and that he did in accordance with the constitution and by-laws of such association designate her, his mother, as the beneficiary entitled to receive it, and she therefore claims it.

The defence set up by the Relief Association is that by its constitution, in all cases where death is the result of an accident, before the association will pay the amount due to the beneficiary of the member killed, the person legally entitled to recover damages on account of an accident on the road, shall release the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company from all claim to damages. That in this case the person who was legally entitled to sue and recover damages for such death, that is to say, the wife and infant child of said Benjamin, had not released the company, but had made a claim for damages and brought suit, and the company had paid them $3000 by way of settlement of their claim for damages. The question of law presented for our determination is this : If a member of the Baltimore and Ohio Relief Association designates in his application for membership that the amount due to him, or rather his beneficiary, in case of his death, shall he paid to his mother, whether a suit and claim for damages brought by the wife and infant ⁴³⁷ child of the deceased member, the persons legally entitled to damages, if the death was the result of negligence on the part of the railroad company, will bar the recovery of the mother from the Relief Association. There are some questions of pleading which will be disposed of later, but what we have stated is the real legal question in the case, and its solution depends upon the third article of the constitution of the Relief Association.

The Baltimore and Ohio Relief Association, is a corporation duly incorporated, and was no doubt formed both for the benefit of the road and its employés. The road contributed in the beginning a large sum of money, and guarantees the obligations of the association, besides giving it other aid in the furnishing medical attendance to the injured, clerical force, office, &c. The company makes it compulsory on all its employés of certain classes and physical conditions to become members of the association, and to contribute so much a month out of their wages to create and keep up a fund for the benefit of the injured and sick. Members of the association who are injured while in the service of the company, whether the injury be caused by the negligence of the company or not, are entitled to a certain sum, graded according to class, &c.

The benefit which the company expected to derive from the association, or at least probably the principal benefit which it expected, was immunity from suits by its employés where they were injured, or supposed they were by the negligence o the company. The benefit which the members of the association especially derived from it, is that they are paid a certain sum where the accident is not the result of the company’s negligence. The company does not pretend to exact from its employés, the members of the association, an agreement not to sue it for negligence, but by the third section of the ⁴³⁸ constitution of the association, assented to by each employe upon becoming a member, it does exact from them an agreement not to claim the benefit of the relief fund, if they prefer to sue. The meaning of the third section of the constitution is free from all doubt.

Whenever an injury is the result of negligence, whether the injury results in death or not, some person is entitled to sue. By the terms “entitled to damages because of the accident” used in the third section of the constitution, nothing more is meant than that the' •person legally entitled to sue for the damages, shall