Saf-T-Cab Service, Inc. v. Terry

URNER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellee was injured in a collision which occurred while he was engaged in the performance of his duties as a taxicab driver in Baltimore. Two corporations are interested in the cab service in connection with which the appellee was employed. The Motor Cab Company, Inc., was the owner of the cabs used in the business, and the Saf-T-Cab Service, Inc., was conce cued with their operation.

The same office accommodated both corporations and they were subject to the same executive management. Workmen’s compensation insurance was carried by the Saf-T-Cab Service, Inc., while the Motor Cab Company, as the owner of the cabs, insured itself against the public liability incident to such ownership. At the time of the hearings before the State Industrial Accident Commission on the appellee’s claim, the Saf-T-Cab Service, Inc., was in bankruptcy, and the Motor Cab Company was in receivership. It was decided by the commission that the appellee was employed exclusively by the Motor Cab Company.

From that decision he appealed to the Superior Court of Baltimore City, where the case was submitted to a jury upon the issue as to whether the claimant was an employee of the Saf-T-Cab Service, Inc., at the time of the accident in which he was injured. The verdict of the jury on that issue was in the affirmative. From the consequent reversal of the State Industrial Accident Commission’s order, the Globe Indemnity Company, insurer of the Saf-T-Cab Service, Inc., has appealed for itself and the insured, in order to have this court review the refusal of the trial court to dismiss the appeal from the commission and to direct a verdict in accord with its decision. The ground of the motion to dismiss the appeal to the ⁴⁸ court below was that the order of the commission disallowing the claim as against the Saf-T-Cab Service, Inc., was passed more than thirty days before the appeal was entered.

Code, art. 101, sec. 56, as amended by Acts 1927, ch. 587. The'date of the commission’s original order to that effect was July 8th, 1932, but that order was revoked by one subsequently passed upon the claimant’s petition, filed August 5th, 1932, that the case be reopened. It was alleged in the petition that the Saf-T-Cab Service, Inc., was jointly liable, as the claimant’s employer, with the Motor Cab Company and with Stanley A. Bryan, who was the managing executive of both corporations. The order granting the petition stated that, upon further consideration of the testimony, the commission had concluded to rescind and annul its order of July 8th, 1932, and place the case upon the docket, to the end that other parties might be included as the claimant proposed.

It was accordingly ordered that the commission’s previous order in the case be "rescinded and annulled and the case held pending a hearing.”