Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 731

they should judge this and judge that, how they should interpret the law.

“Don't you remember that in that first two years that you were there you made decisions under the workmen's compensation law that had never been made before. You made them yourself, sometimes against the advice of the lawyers in the Department, the Chief Counsel in the Department. That was the way it was done. You wrote the opinions yourself. You put everything in the opinion. You quoted the testimony and you set up a new way of sending the cases up to court. Don't you remember that?” I didn't. “In the first two years there were a great many of your cases appealed by the insurance companies to the appellate Division of the Court of Appeals. You were sustained in all but one of them, and made new compensation laws. That was the most important thing you did on the compensation side. You extended the utilization of workmen's compensation into all kinds of fields and you made more generous decisions, more generous interpretations in the case of the clause ‘was injured in the course of his employment.'

“Don't you remember that you made a decision in a case when a man was on the steps of the building going into his work and stumbled and fell there, breaking a leg? That was in the course of his employment - from the moment he left





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help