Mahlon Pitney

“ The answer that the common law makes to the hardship of requiring the employe to assume all consequences, both personal and pecuniary, of injuries arising out of the ordinary dangers of the occupation, is that the parties enter into the contract of employment with these risks in view, and that the consequences ought to be, and presumably are, taken into consideration in fixing the rate of wages. ”

“ We are unable to say that the Employers' Liability Law of Arizona, in requiring the employer in hazardous industries to assume-so far as pecuniary consequences go-the entire risk of injury to the employe attributable to accidents arising in the course of the employment and due to its inherent conditions, exceeds the bounds of permissible legislation or interferes with the constitutional rights of the employer. ”

“ The burden is due to the hazardous nature of the industry, and is inevitable if the work of the world is to go forward. What the act does is merely to require that it shall be assumed, to the extent of a pecuniary equivalent of the actual and proximate damage sustained by the workman or those near to him, by the employer-by him who organizes the enterprise, hires the workmen, fixes the wages, sets a price upon the product, pays the costs, and takes for his reward the net profits, if any. ”

“ Under the 'due process' clause, the ultimate contention is that men have an indefeasible right to employ their fellow men to work under conditions where, as all parties know, from time to time some of the workmen inevitably will be killed or injured, but where nobody knows or can know in advance which particular men or how many will be the victims, or how serious will be the injuries, and hence no adequate compensation can be included in the wages ”

“ And they have come to this resolution, we repeat, not in a matter of in difference, or upon a question of mere economics, but in the course of regulating the conduct of those hazardous industries in which human beings-their own people-in the pursuit of a livelihood must expose themselves to death or to physical injuries more or less disabling, with consequent impoverishment, partial or total, of the workman or those dependent upon him. ”

“ The principal contention is that the Arizona Employers' Liability Law deprives the employer of property without due process of law, and denies to him the equal protection of the laws, because it imposes a liability without fault, and, as is said, without equivalent protection. ”

“ The rule existing in the absence of statute, as usually enunciated, is that all consequences of risks inherent in the occupation and normally incident to it are assumed by the employe and afford no ground of action by him or those claiming under him, in the absence of negligence by the employer ”

“ Hence, recognizing that injuries to workmen constitute a part of the unavoidable cost of hazardous industries, we will require that it be assumed by the one in control of the industry as employer, just as he pays other items of cost ”

“ With such considerations this court cannot concern itself. Novelty is not a constitutional objection, since under constitutional forms of government each state may have a legislative body endowed with authority to change the law. ”

“ They are not placed, by the Fourteenth Amendment, beyond the reach of the state's power to alter them, as rules of future conduct and tests of responsibility, through legislation designed to promote the general welfare, so long as it does not interfere arbitrarily and unreasonably, and in defiance of natural justice, with the right of employers and employes to agree between themselves respecting the terms and conditions of employment. ”

“ But if it is proper to allow them of course no objection can be founded on the supposed foibles of the tribunal that the Constitution of the United States and the States have established. Why, then, is it not proper to allow them? It is said that the pain cannot be shifted to another. Nither can the loss of a leg. But one can be paid for as well as the other. ”

“ But whether they do or not they are as much part of the workman's loss as the loss of a limb. The legislature may have reasoned thus. If a business is unsuccessful it means that the public does not care enough for it to make it pay. ”

“ Apart from the control exercised by the judge it is to be hoped that juries would realize that unreasonable verdicts would tend to make the business impossible and thus to injure those whom they might wish to help. ”