222 Mass. 487 | Mass. | 1916
Honora E. Madden was an employee of a carpet company, which was a subscriber under the workmen’s compensation act, St. 1911, c. 751. The Industrial Accident Board found that, while engaged in the performance of the work for which she was hired, she “received a personal injury arising out of . . . her employment, . . . aggravating and accelerating a weak heart condition to the point of total incapacity for work.” This finding, standing alone, might be considered indecisive. It simply is a
A finding was warranted that she had “a weak heart condition” before her injury and before she entered the service of the subscriber. Her work for it was to repair bad spots in the weaving on rolls of carpet. The roll was placed on some device nearby, and she pulled the carpet along and over a table in front of her. Her own description was that “her work was more pulling [that is “dragging the carpet along over the table”] than sewing . . . the carpet was brought to them in a roll and a bar was put through this roll and two girls had to lift it; they undid the carpet on that roll, turned the back over and had to pull it, then they had to turn the face of it over and it was taken to the shears — they had to pull it to them; they dragged them on the floor; there were some carpets that had to be put on the table, but not all of them . . . she had not been sewing all morning on the day of the alleged injury — there is not as much sewing to do as pulling . . . she never had any attack before this one.” Her description of the “personal injury” (Part II, § 1) on which the claim is founded, was this: “She went to work on the morning of July 10, as she had every morning, and worked up to the time she was taken with the pain — that was about 11.40 o’clock; she was pulling carpets at the time she felt something give — she thought it would pass away . . . she continued to work until it was time to wash up — she heated her tea . . . and sat down to eat her dinner — she could not eat,
Rational minded persons endeavoring to get at the truth might have found upon this evidence, with the deductions reasonably to be drawn from it, that the employee, being under some degree of disability due to a "weak heart, suffered by reason of the exertion in pulling the carpet, as required by her contract of service, a further acute impairment of the strength of the heart, whereby it was disabled from performing its normal functions as it had done theretofore. This was a damage to a physical organ. It was a definite and specific detriment to the physiological structure of her body.
The standard established in this respect by our workmen’s compensation act as the ground for compensation is simply the receiving of “personal injury arising out of and in the course of” the employment. This standard is materially different from that of the English act and of the acts of some of the States of this nation. That standard is “personal injury by accident,” both in the act of 1897 and 1906. See Sts. 60 & 61 Viet. c. 37, § 1 (1); 6 Edw. VII, c. 58, § 1 (1).
The difference between the phraseology of our act and the English act in this respect cannot be regarded as immaterial or casual. The English act in its present form was passed several years before ours. It was known to the Legislature which enacted our statute and was followed as to its general frame and in many important particulars. Gould’s Case, 215 Mass. 480, 486. McNicol’s Case,
The wide divergence between a simple “personal injury,” the standard of our act, and the “personal injury by accident” of the English and other acts is exemplified further by reference to some of the decisions. It was held in Steel v. Cammell, Laird & Co. Ltd. [1905] 2 K. B. 232, that lead poisoning resulting from a gradual accumulation of the poison in handling lead, in Broderick v. Lon
Actions for personal injury arising from disease contracted in the course of employment and without physical impact are not uncommon where the other elements exist to establish liability. Thompson v. United Laboratories, 221 Mass. 276. Cox v. American Agricultural Chemical Co. 24 R. I. 503. Wagner v. Jayne Chemical Co. 147 Penn. St. 475. Fox v. Peninsular White Lead & Color Works, 84 Mich. 676, 682. That they have not been more frequent, perhaps has been due to the fact that such dangers usually are well known and are assumed by the contract of employment, or are not matters aboutwhich a duty has been owed by the employer.
“Personal injury” is materially broader in its scope than is
Varying facts may give rise to questions of difficulty. In this connection it is to be noted that there is no explicit provision for compensation for occupational disease as such. “ Personal injury ” is the only ground for compensation. The legislative principle declared by the workmen’s compensation act, to the test of which all cases arising under it must be subjected, is that whatever rightly is describable as a “personal injury,” if received "in the course of” and “arising out of” the employment, becomes the basis for a claim.
If the harm suffered by the employee in the case at bar had been received as the result of physical endeavor or strain in striving to resist tortious conduct by the employer, or in merely being subjected to such conduct, there would be little doubt that recovery could be had in an action at law as for a “personal injury” in the common law sense of those words. Coleman v. New York & New Haven Railroad, 106 Mass. 160, 178. Larson v. Boston Elevated Railway, 212 Mass. 262 and cases collected. Wiemert v. Boston Elevated Railway, 216 Mass. 598.
Without undertaking to define “personal injury” or to go beyond the requirements of the facts here presented, it is enough to say that the occurrence described by the dependent when she said “she felt something give” and “felt something else give way,” accompanied by the symptoms of angina pectoris, may have been found to be a “personal injury.”
That injury also may have been found to have arisen out of the employment. The pulling of the carpet, although not requiring such putting forth of muscular power as would have affected a healthy person, yet may have been enough to cause the injury which the employee suffered. It could have been regarded as resulting from the work as a contributing proximate cause. McNicol’s Case, 215 Mass. 497, 499. Brightman’s Case, 220 Mass. 17. Fisher’s Case, 220 Mass. 581.
Even under the English act it seems that a personal injury such as that here disclosed would be held to have arisen “by accident” and hence to be within that act. It has been decided that perforation of a diseased intestine by slight pressure such as would be harmless to a healthy person, Woods v. Wilson, Sons &
It has been argued with force on behalf of the insurer that since the harm to the employee was not wholly the effect of the work but came in large part from the previous weakened condition of the employee’s heart, hence, either there can be no award of compensation, or it should be restricted to that part of the injury which resulted directly from the work, and the part of the injury which flowed from the previous condition should be excluded. Even though the premise be sound, the conclusion does not follow. The act makes no provision for any such analysis or apportionment. It protects the “employee.” That word is defined in Part V, § 2, as including “every person in the service of another under any contract of hire, ” with exceptions not here pertinent. There is nothing said about the protection being confined to the healthy employee. The previous condition of health is of no consequence in determining the amount of relief to be afforded. It has no more to do with it than his lack of ordinary care or the employer’s freedom from simple negligence. It is a most material circumstance to be considered and weighed in ascertaining whether the injury resulted from the work or from disease. It is the injury arising out of the employment and not out of disease of the employee for which compensation is to be made. Yet it is the hazard of the employment acting upon the particular employee in his condition of health and not what that hazard would be if acting upon a healthy employee or upon the average employee. The act makes no distinction between wise or foolish, skilled or inexperienced, healthy or diseased employees. All who rightly are describable as employees come within the act.
The act is not a substitute for disability or old age pensions. It cannot be strained to include that kind of relief. Its ultimate purpose simply is to treat the cost of personal injuries incidental
It is contended that, since the act contemplates a kind of accident insurance as the means of affording relief to the employee, it cannot have been the intent of the Legislature to include such risks as that here disclosed, because of the difficulty of fixing a rate of insurance. But there does not appear as matter of law to be any insuperable difficulty in this respect. Fortuitous events, which appear to be as difficult of forecast as this, are common subjects of insurance.
It is argued that grave economic consequences of far reaching effect may follow from the act as thus construed. It is said that persons not in good health may be altogether excluded from employment to their severe hardship, while the cost of conducting commercial and industrial enterprises may become prohibitively large, all to the detriment of the general welfare and of the financial resources of the Commonwealth. These considerations are of great public moment. But these factors relate to legislative questions and the arguments founded on them are distinctly legislative arguments. They may be entitled to attention and
There are no conditions which warrant a judicial interpretation of the words “personal injury” in the act as meaning the same as “personal injury by accident” or as excluding from the scope of “personal injuries” those instances where a diseased physical condition may have invited, or rendered the employee unusually susceptible to, “personal injury.” It may be that the Legislature intended a more narrow field than actually was described by the words used. But if that be so, the remedy must be sought from the Legislature. There are no means by which the court can ascertain "the purpose and effect of a statute except from the words used when given their common and approved meaning.” Bergeron, petitioner, 220 Mass. 472, 475.
The constitutionality of the act as thus interpreted is assailed. It is urged that the employer is compelled to part with property for causes for which he is in no wise responsible, and that thus he is deprived of property without due process of law. In its essence that is an attack upon the act as a whole, for in none of its ordinary aspects does the payment required by the act depend upon fault, and it may be required in many cases where the employer was wholly free from fault. In support of this attack,
The reasons which have been set forth in this opinion and in the cases to which reference has been made seem to us to compel the conclusion that on the evidence here disclosed it was competent for the Industrial Accident Board to find that the employee had received a “personal injury arising out of and in the course of” her “employment,” according to the true meaning of those words in the workmen’s compensation act.
Decree
Made in the Superior Court by O’Connell, J.-