285 A.D. 910 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1955
The employer and its insurance carrier have appealed from a decision of the Workmen’s Compensation Board awarding adamant compensation for a 40% schedule permanent loss of use of his left hand. On June 12, 1951, while working for his employer, claimant’s left hand was pinched between two bars of heavy steel, resulting in permanent injuries by way of extension defects at the metacarpal phalangeal joints of the first, second and third fingers of that hand. He had a pre-existing loss of use of the thumb of the same hand caused by a boyhood accident while playing baseball. There was agreement in the medical evidence that the pre-existing thumb injury constituted a 90% permanent loss of that digit and that that injury and the injuries to the fingers in the industrial accident, considered together, resulted in a 40% loss of use of the left hand. It further appeared that the thumb injury accounted for a 35% loss of use of the hand so that the finger injuries