171 P. 429 | Cal. | 1918
This is an application for a writ of review after an award by the Industrial Accident Commission in favor of one Lester M. DeWitt against his employers, Jacoby Brothers, a corporation, and its insurer, The Fidelity Casualty Company of New York, a corporation, the petitioners herein.
The facts of the case upon which it is alleged by the petitioners that the commission arrived at an erroneous conclusion as a matter of law are set forth in the findings of the commission, which it is conceded there was evidence adduced before it sufficient to support. Said findings are as follows:
"1. That Lester M. DeWitt, applicant herein, was injured by accident on the 7th day of January, 1914, while in the *615 employment of defendant Jacoby Brothers, and that said accident arose out of and happened in the course of said employment and in the manner following:
"a. Said Lester M. DeWitt was for about two years prior to the happening of said accident a show card sign writer, and, the better to shade in colors in the artistic writing of said cards, he was, and for about one and one-half years had been, in the habit of using dyes dissolved in wood alcohol and forced through a fine needle by air pressure.
"b. That ordinarily he used this appliance only a very small portion of time, but during the holidays immediately preceding said accident there was a very much greater use of (this) apparatus, and, directly after the holidays, when the pressure of work had somewhat slackened said DeWitt used an extraordinary quantity of wood alcohol in cleaning the apparatus and in washing and cleaning his hands; that he used such extraordinary quantity by pouring it on cloths.
"c. That on the 7th of January said DeWitt had not noticed anything the matter with his eyesight but, on that day, he suddenly found that his vision was very greatly affected and went to see an oculist who fitted him with glasses but told him that glasses would do him very little good because there was a degeneration of the optic nerves.
"d. By the 13th of January he was entirely unable to use his eyes for the work he had been doing and from and after that date until the date of hearing had been barely able to make his way about the streets and was unable to do any work requiring even ordinary vision.
"e. That, while using wood alcohol, as hereinbefore described, for such cleaning purposes, on or about the 7th of January, 1914, the eyes and optic nerve were exposed to and came in contact with the vapor of wood alcohol in unusual quantities, involving the sudden impairment of the vision of said applicant, and that said injuries so received constituted an accident which arose out of and happened in the course of said employment, and were not the result of an occupational disease."
It is the concluding phrase of the foregoing findings which the petitioners assail as a legal conclusion not justified by the language of the Workmen's Compensation Act as it read at the time of the injury upon which the award herein was made. Section 12 of the Workmen's Compensation Act, the so-called *616
Boynton Act, as it stood in January, 1914, the time of the applicant's injury, provided that "liability for the compensation provided by this act, in lieu of any other liability whatsoever, shall, without regard to negligence, exist against an employer for any personal injuries sustained by his employees by accident arising out of and in the course of the employment." It is the contention of the petitioners herein that the injury suffered by the applicant under the state of facts as found by the commission was not an "injury sustained by accident" within the meaning of that phrase as used in the foregoing excerpt from the Workmen's Compensation Act. In support of this contention the petitioners urge that the words "injury sustained by accident" are to be given a meaning which would confine their application to cases where the means or cause of the injury was accidental; as where it was the result of a casualty or of the happening of some precedent circumstance or event which, being itself unexpected or out of the ordinary, was thus to be deemed accidental; and that the word "accident" as employed in the act cannot be given application to the instant case where the result in the way of injury to the applicant, however unexpected and unintended, was due to the doing by him of acts which he intended to do and to the use of means which he intended to use in the course of his ordinary employment. In support of this contention the petitioner herein chiefly relies on the cases of Rock v.Travelers' Ins. Co.,
For the foregoing reasons the petition herein is denied and the award of the commission affirmed.
Shaw, J., Sloss, J., Wilbur, J., Melvin, J., and Angellotti, C. J., concurred.
Rehearing denied.