Orendorf v. H. Weber & Sons Co.

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The trial court, sitting without a jury, reversed the Acci ⁴²⁵ dent Commission and held that the claimant Orendorf, who was injured while replacing a steam pipe in a greenhouse on a farm, was not covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Act because his employment consisted of rendering services in connection with agricultural pursuits, which the Act expressly does not protect. The employer is a corporation that owns a farm of several hundred acres in Garrett County. Until recent years, the farm produced oats, beans, peas, and the usual farm crops.

Of late years sixty acres have been devoted to raising hay, other acres to raising corn, eight acres to the outdoor cultivation of flowers and plants, and two acres are covered by eighteen greenhouses. In these are raised floricultural products from seed and cuttings to potted plants and cut flowers, as well as tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, cabbage and sweet potatoes for sale as young plants or to maturity for market. Cattle owned by others are wintered on the farm. The manure is used to produce a liquid fertilizer for the flowers and plants in the greenhouses.

Soil from the farm replenishes that in the greenhouse. The carnation crop is started out of doors and then brought into the greenhouses for the winter. Adjacent to the greenhouses is a boiler house which furnishes steam at the pressure used for heating homes to a system of pipes that heat the greenhouses, prevent accumulation of snow on them and sterilize the soil. The claimant’s main duties were in the greenhouses.

He watered plants, carried and screened dirt, weeded and gathered flowers, put plants in “flats”, and wrapped and shipped mature plants. From time to time he worked elsewhere on the farm by helping in the barn, making hay, hauling dirt and manure, sacking grain on the combine, hoeing, spading and planting. Occasionally, he would assist in the replacement or repair of the pipes that carried the steam in the greenhouses, as he was doing when he was hurt. Almost none of the States protect those who work on or in connection with a farm or its products by workmen’s compensation coverage. 1 Larson Workmen’s Compensation Law, Sec. 53.10.

Some acts exclude “farm” labor or employment; others “agricultural” work or workers. The de ⁴²⁶ cisions hold that statutes that do not cover “agricultural” workers exclude many who would be covered by a statute which excludes only farm labor. Lowe v. North Dakota Workmen's Compensation Bureau (N. D.), 264 N. W. 837, 838 ; Dost v. Pevely Dairy Co. (Mo.), 273 S. W. 2d 242 . Agriculture embraces not only farming but horticulture as well, and horticulture in turn embraces floriculture.

Funk & Wagnall’s New Standard Dictionary (1942) defines “agriculture”