Where workmen are employed to work at a certain place, and are transported to and from such place by the employer, as a part of their contract of employment, the period of service continues during transportation; Ryan v. C. R. Co., 23 Pa. 384.
If a workman is about his own affairs at the time an accident happens, such accident cannot be said to arise out of and in the course of his employment. If he deliberately and for no reason leaves the work he is em ployed upon, and attempts to do something he knows he is not employed to do, it would be contradictory to say that he is acting within the scope of his employment.
Where injury occurs to a workman acting in an emergency, the rule is that the work man does not go out of his employment if he endeavors to prevent the danger from taking effect. Acting in an emergency, the employe is not expected to act as he would under cir cumstances that give time for more deliberate action.
The work of a girl employed in a mill end ed on Wednesday, but she could not be paid until two days later. She returned to the mill on the following Friday to secure her pay, and while there fell down stairs and was injured. Held that the employment ex isted at the time ; Kiley v. Holland, [1911] 1 K. B. 1029.
Notice. The acts generally require an in jured workman to give notice to his employer of his injury within a specified time. Most of the statutes give thirty days within which the notice must be given. The notice must be in writing and state the time, place and, in ordinary language, the cause of the injury. It must contain the name or names of the person or persons claiming compensation, and must be served on the employer in the man ner specified by statute, which is generally by personal service on the employer or some representative or superintendent, or by reg istered mail. Usually the want of or any de fect or inaccuracy in the notice, or in its service, will not defeat the right to compensa tion unless the employer is prejudiced there by. If the failure to give notice, or the giv ing of a defective notice, is occasioned by mistake, physical or mental incapacity, or other reasonable cause, it is not fatal.
Aside from the fact that the giving of no tice of injury to the employer has a tendency to defeat any fraudulent claim and the mak ing of a stale demand, it is intended to put the employer in possession of the facts of the particular accident, so that he may make investigations of the details of the accident in order to ascertain whether or not he is lia ble to pay compensation, and to prepare his defense if he desires to contest the claim.
The requirement that the notice state the place where the accident occurred is not com plied with by giving the name of the town in which it occurred, or by any other such gen eral statement. A notice under the New York statute which stated that because of the slip pert', greasy and defective condition of the floor around the machine at which the em ploy6 worked, he slipped and his left hand was caught in the machine, was held not sufficiently definite as to the place and cause of the injury to authorize an action ; Welch v. Waterbury Co., 144 App. Div. 213, 128 N. Y. Supp. 974. By requiring a statement of the cause of the injury, it is meant a state ment of the physical cause ; Valentino v. Machine Co., 139 App. Div. 139, 123 N. Y. Supp. 959 ; and not a statement of the par ticular violation of the employer's duty by reason of which the injury occurred ; Impel lizzieri v. Cranford, 141 App. Div. 755, 126 N. Y. Supp. 644. It means that the accident should be so described that a person of ordi nary intelligence who knows nothing about it could understand how it happened. It is not necessary that all the facts going to establish a cause of action should be stated, as they would in a complaint or petition ; Dippolito v. Brown, 148 App. Div. 116, 131 N. Y. Supp. 1021.
The compensation statutes as a rule do not require the workman himself, or, in case of his death, his dependents, to give notice of the injury. They merely require that no tice of the injury be given the employer. It may, therefore, be given by any one on behalf of the workmen, but it is thought it must pur port to come by authority of the workman. Thus, a mere report of an accident made by a third person at the instance of the employ er is thought not to be sufficient; Roberts and Wallace, Duty and Liability of Employ ers (3d Ed.) 317; although such fact may go to show that the employ@ was not dam aged by the want of notice. A notice signed "Corcoran and Parker, Attorneys for Charles Dolan," purports to be signed on behalf of Charles Dolan, and, in the absence of evi dence to the contrary, sufficiently shows that the attorneys were authorized to sign it ; Dolan v. Alley, 153 Mass. 380, 26 N. E. 989.