Geneva Const. Co. v. Martin Trans. Co‪.‬

This court has allowed the petition for leave to appeal of defendant, Martin Storage and Transfer Company, from a judgment
of the Appellate Court, affirming a judgment of the circuit court of Kane County entered in favor of plaintiffs, Geneva Construction
Company and its employee, Frank J. Powers, in the amount of $15,000, for personal injuries sustained by Frank J. Powers. This appeal presents essentially two questions of law: first, whether, under the status of the law after the first paragraph
of section 29 of the Workmen's Compensation Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1947, chap. 48, par. 166,) was held unconstitutional, and
prior to the 1953 amendments thereto, an employer could recover, from a third-party tort-feasor operating under the act, the
amount of compensation the employer paid to the injured employee; and secondly, whether, under the terms of section 46 of
the Civil Practice Act, an employee injured by a third-party tort-feasor under the Workmen's Compensation Act can assert a
common-law claim for damages against such party more than four years after the injuries were sustained, by filing an amendment
and joining in the employer's action against the tort-feasor, which had been instituted in the proper time.