276 Mass. 610 | Mass. | 1931
These are workmen’s compensation cases. G. L. c. 152. The employees seek compensation for incapacity for work by reason of outbreaks of industrial dermatitis and susceptibility to recurrence of such outbreaks. The underlying principles have been considered in Panagotopulos’s Case, ante, 600, and need not be restated.
First. In Corey’s Case the Industrial Accident Board decided that the insurer of the Central Shoe Company, Inc. was liable to the employee for total incapacity compensation from March 22, 1930, to October 8, 1930, and partial incapacity compensation thereafter. The Superior Court rendered a decree in accordance with this decision with a modification excluding from the period of total incapacity four days during which the employee worked for this employer and ten days during which he worked for the Amalgamated Shoe Corporation. The insurer appealed.
The decree was right so far as it awarded compensation for total incapacity from March 22, 1930, to September 2,
For sixteen or seventeen years this employee was a “treer.” He went to work for this employer in 1929, and continued to work for it until March 22,1930. The evidence warranted a finding that while so employed he used liquids in his work which caused an outbreak of dermatitis on his right hand rendering him wholly incapable of work from March 22, 1930, until September 2, 1930, except for four days in May when he worked for this employer. The employee’s testimony to similar outbreaks from the same cause while working for the Leader Shoe Company before he entered the employ of the Central Shoe company did not require a finding that his incapacity for work after March 22 resulted from exposure to liquids in the course of such previous employment. The finding of the board “that the treer dermatitis which the employee contracted in 1929 had gotten entirely well prior to the date upon which he entered the employment of the Central Shoe Company” was warranted by the evidence. That employer took the employee in his “then condition” (Fábrizio’s Case, 274 Mass. 352, 354,) and the insurer is not relieved of liability to pay compensation by reason of the existence at that time of any susceptibility of the employee, however caused, to outbreaks of the disease upon further exposure to poisonous liquids. Panagotopulos’s Case, ante, 600, and cases cited at page 607.
On September 2, 1930, the employee went to work for the Amalgamated Shoe Company. He testified that his hand then was “clear” but “still tender,” that he worked there nine or ten days, and then got the same trouble again, and that after “he started-to work for them, his hands broke out. He couldn’t work any more.” The evidence does not establish a causal relation between the employee’s exposure while working for the Central Shoe company and this outbreak. He has not sustained the burden of showing that his exposure while working for the Amalgamated Shoe company was not such a voluntary act on his part as to break the fine of causation between his injury, arising out of and in the course of a
The award of compensation for partial incapacity was based on the employee’s incapacity for work as a “treer” because of his susceptibility to further outbreaks of dermatitis upon further exposure to poisonous liquids. The evidence does not show a causal relation between the employee’s injury resulting from exposure while in. the employ of the Central Shoe company and his susceptibility to outbreaks of the disease after September 2,1930.
Second. In Maloof’s Case the Industrial Accident Board decided that the insurer of the Signal Shoe Company was liable to the employee for total incapacity compensation from May 19, 1930, to June 16, 1930, and partial incapacity compensation thereafter. The Superior Court rendered a decree in accordance with this decision and the insurer appealed.
The decree was erroneous. The employee has not established his right to compensation from this insurer for any period after May 19, 1930.
The employee worked as a "treer” for sixteen or seventeen years, three and a half years for the Signal Shoe Cpmpany. On February 14, 1929, while working for this employer he received an injury from exposure to liquids resulting in dermatitis in his right hand. The employee was paid compensation for total incapacity for work to November 26, 1929. Thereafter the board awarded compensation for partial incapacity, payment of which was discontinued May 19, 1930. No question as to compensation for the period prior to this date is raised in this proceeding.
The evidence warranted a finding that the employee was totally incapacitated for work from May 19, 1930, to June 16,1930, by reason of an outbreak of dermatitis, but did not warrant a finding that such incapacity resulted from the original injury incurred by the employee in the course of his employment by the Signal Shoe Company. There was evidence that the employee had had no skin trouble of any kind before 1929. The evidence of outbreaks after February of that year was conflicting, but it could have been
The award of compensation for partial incapacity for work
It follows that in Corey’s Case the decree must be modified so as to provide only for compensation for total incapacity, for work from March 22, 1930, excluding four days, to September 2, 1930, and that in Maloof’s Case, the decree must be reversed and a decree entered for the insurer.
So ordered.