Hello, dear readers!

Your humble blogger bids you a very happy early Thanksgiving.  May tomorrow be a day of rest, thoughtful reflection, and peace for you.  As the saying goes, “comparison is the thief of joy,” so let this Thanksgiving be a day when we don’t think about what others have that we do not, but what we do have.  We’ve come a very long way from celebrating finding bitter berries while dodging saber-tooth tigers.

Anywho, with that thought out of the way, I thought we might all look back at another “blast from the past.” The case is Pohler  v. Cory, and hails from 1941!

Defendant had a turkey ranch on about 153 acres where he had more than 2000 birds per year.  Right before Thanksgiving, Cory would hire help to make the birds… well… “festive” by engaging in a maneuver called a “stick” – the approved procedure for killing the birds.  Your humble blogger doesn’t know the “stick” method very well, but would be happy to take care of any Wild Turkey that is of inconvenience to his beloved readers.

Pohler cut his index finger while performing a “stick” and his finger became infected, necessitating amputation.  While he claimed that he was an employee, Cory claimed that he was just being out for the job, and that he wasn’t going to let Pohler gobble gobble up his profits (that last part is my contribution to the story).

The Industrial Accident Commission held that, as a poultry raiser, Cory and his would-be employees were excluded from the workers’ compensation code by virtue of Labor Code section 4250, because his earnings for the preceding year did not reach $500.

Have you ever heard of Labor Code section 4250? Well, it was repealed in 1959, and Lexis only goes back to 1991, so I can only assume it allowed poultry growers to fly the workers’ compensation coop.