76 Pa. Super. 83 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1921
Opinion by
The-plaintiff appellee, during the course of his employment with the appellant company, received a serious injury to one of his eyes. He sought compensation therefor from the Workmen’s Compensation Board. The ref
Section 306 of tbe Compensation Act provides, inter alia, “If tbe employee shall refuse reasonable surgical, medical and hospital services,.be shall forfeit all right to compensation for any injury or any increase in bis incapacity shown to have resulted from such refusal.” Who is to determine in a given case whether or not1 tbe conduct of an injured employee was or was not reasonable under all of tbe circumstances? Plainly enough tbe referee is tbe trier of such a question, because tbe legislature bas so declared. Now tbe situation was briefly this: Tbe claimant was injured in September of 1917, having been struck in one of bis eyes by a piece of coal from a blast in one of tbe defendant’s plants. He immediately consulted a physician of tbe defendant company at its Locust Spring Colliery, who after treating tbe eye several times sent him to tbe Pottsville hospital, where be remained from September 20th to September 25th, and then went, still following tbe advice of defendant’s surgeons, to tbe Jefferson hospital in Philadelphia, where be remained about ten days. He then returned home and again placed himself under tbe care of Dr. Zimmerman, who seems to have been one of tbe company’s chief surgeons, who gave him a certificate of bis fitness to return to work on tbe 12th of November, but directed him to return from time to time for observation during the following two weeks. Tbe trouble with tbe eye continued and after a time began to increase and in April of 1918, months after tbe injury, tbe defendant’s surgeons reached tbe conclusion that' tbe claimant should have a serious operation known as Iridectomy. This the claimant refused to do, and in bis own testimony furnished a rather forceful reason for bis conduct. That such an operation could not be said to insure tbe hoped
Tbe appeal is dismissed at the costs of tbe appellant.