LARRY KNUTSON, Employee,
v.
A. MORRELL TRUCKING, UNINSURED, Employer/Appellant,
and
WILDENAUER CHIROPRACTIC CLINIC and CNA/CONTINENTAL INS. CO., Intervenors,
and
SPECIAL COMPENSATION FUND.
Minnesota Workers Compensation
Workers' Compensation Court of Appeals
April 9, 1999
HEADNOTES
EVIDENCE
- ADMISSION. Where, given the bases for the judge's
decision, further questioning of the employee as an adverse
witness was unlikely to have changed the outcome of the case,
and where the employer's attorney had made no offer of
proof to allow the judge to reconsider her ruling and to
provide a more suitable record for review, the compensation
judge's denial of the employer's request to recall
the employee as an adverse witness in its own defense case,
following completion of the employee's direct testimony
and subsequent cross-examination by the employer's
attorney, did not constitute reversible error,
notwithstanding the law's general favoring of liberal
admission of evidence in workers' compensation
proceedings.
Affirmed.
Determined by Pederson, J., Johnson, J., and Hefte, J.
Compensation Judge: Joan G. Hallock
OPINION
WILLIAM R. PEDERSON, Judge
Uninsured
employer A. Morrell Trucking appeals from the compensation
judge's ruling prohibiting the employer's calling of
the employee as an adverse witness following completion of
the employee's direct testimony and
cross-examination. We affirm.
BACKGROUND
Larry
Knutson began working as a truck driver for A. Morrell
Trucking on September 9, 1997. Scott Morrell was the
sole officer, director, and shareholder of A. Morrell
Trucking [the employer], and Mr. Knutson [the employee] was
its first hired employee. Mr. Morrell and the employee
were personally acquainted prior to the date of hire, having
met at job sites that summer.
The
employee was hired to operate a company dump truck that
hauled dirt, rubble, and sand for the employer's
customers. The employer hired out its trucks and drivers
together to customers, who would pay based on the amount of
time the truck and driver were at the job site ready to haul
material. The employer owned two trucks, only one of
which the employee drove in the course of his job. The
employee's normal job duties included picking up the
truck at a local Sinclair gas station first thing in the
morning, checking the truck for safety, driving to the
project site, bringing loads of dirt to where the project
manager directed, and returning the truck to the Sinclair
station. The employee's job schedule for any given
day's work was typically communicated to the employee by
a telephone call from the employer the evening before. A
typical day started at 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. and ended at 3:00 or
4:00 p.m. The latest the employee worked for the
employer was 7:00 p.m. He was paid $12.50 per hour for
forty hours of work per week. The employee was paid for
the time he spent at the project sites, plus a half hour each
day for driving to and from the job sites.
On
September 16, 1997, the employee's work day was shortened
due to a heavy rainfall. The employee left his job site
at about 12:30 p.m. and was back at the Sinclair station
about a half hour later. He parked his truck and went
home. Upon arriving home, he telephoned his employer and
left a message that he was at home. Mr. Morrell called
back, and he and the employee agreed to meet at the Sinclair
station and then to travel to the Midland Company to obtain
an estimate for a spill shield for the employee's
truck.1 The employee arrived at the
Sinclair station that afternoon, and Mr. Morrell met him
there. Mr. Morrell asked the employee to drive and told
him which highway to take. While heading north on Cedar
Avenue, the truck slid into a...
