25 A.D.2d 899 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1966
Appeal by a self-insured employer from a decision which awarded compensation for a 62%% schedule loss of use of the right hand resulting from an accidental injury to the right wrist, being a fracture of the right carpal navicular bone, found to have occurred in January, 1960, while claimant was working as a helper on a machine designed to finish and straighten steel tubes and when a four-inch tube weighing about 160 pounds slipped off a die, went up in the air and, when claimant attempted to eateh it, with his hand extended, struck the hand and forced it “all the way back”. The operator of the machine testified to the incident as described by claimant and subsequently found by the board and said, further, that he advised claimant to seek first aid. Claimant explained his failure to do so, as well as his failure to report the accident until April 22, 1960, by stating that, “I thought it was just a sprain” and, again, “It hurt * * * but I thought it was a sprain, I thought I could work it out because I was on strike previous to that and needed the money.” He later reiterated, “ The reason I didn’t report it I thought it was just a sprain.” Discussing varying thresholds of pain, one physician said that “many” people with fractures which they supposed to be wrist strains have worked “with constant diseom