Tragedy and farce in torts class

I've tried not to share many law school moments on this blog - it's off-topic, for one thing, and, for another thing, most of those moments are not very interesting. For example, it's not often that the cases one reads as a first-year law student are the sort of thing that leads you to laugh out loud. But today's Torts class was an exception to the general rule of boring 1L reading.

From the case of Carvalho v. Decorative Fabrics Co.:

The petitioner worked in respondent's factory as a 'flock-boy.' His duties consisted of handling and working with yarn. At the end of a work shift it was customary for fellow employees to assist each other in removing the lint and yarn which accumulated on their clothing by use of an airhose. On the particular day in question, February 25, 1974, a fellow worker, while cleaning the yarn from petitioner's clothing, placed the airhose in the vicinity of petitioner's rectum causing petitioner to be knocked to the floor.

On the following evening, petitioner began suffering severe pain and discomfort and was taken by a friend to the emergency room of the Pawtucket Memorial Hospital. There he was examined by a physician who diagnosed the injury as a perforated rectum.

The question in this case was whether such an injury should be covered by workmen's compensation insurance. But the more important lesson that I took away from it was a lesson that applies to all sorts of dangerous pranks - it's all in good fun until someone's rectum gets perforated. The synopsis in our casebook didn't even mention that the victim's title was "flock-boy," but this case still had the lecture hall laughing out loud.

We then moved on to the case of Kerr-McGee Corp. v. Hutto, where the court's majority opinion was that a death in the workplace was compensable by the state's workmen's comp scheme despite the unusual circumstances of the employee's death - one justice dissented:

I must respectfully dissent from the opinion of the majority of the Court which holds that workmen's compensation benefits must be paid for the death of a service station attendant who was shot and killed because he was engaged in a love affair with the wife of the service station owner (the wife managed the station where the deceased worked).

I firmly believe in the concept of workmen's compensation for the protection of workers who are killed or injured from the hazards of their work. However, to allow benefits for injuries or death arising out of a love affair, as in the present case, seems to me to stretch the workmen's compensation concept too far and certainly far beyond the intent of the legislature which provided that benefits would only be payable for injuries or death arising out of and in the course of a workman's employment. I fail to see how Mr. Hutto's employment had anything to do with his death except to afford the amorous couple the opportunity to meet.

Oh, the humanity of it all...