201 N.W. 545 | Minn. | 1924
Lead Opinion
The sole question to be determined may be thus stated: When, in the course of his employment, an accidental injury to a workmen's eye necessitates its removal, does the workman, totally blind in that eye since childhood, become entitled to compensation as provided by the following portion of section 14, chapter 82, p. 96, L. 1921, "For the loss of an eye, sixty-six and two-thirds per centum of the daily wage at the time of injury during one hundred (100) weeks"?
A new phase of the subject of compensation for eye injuries is presented, although there are three cases which come close to the point raised here.
In State ex rel. Garwin v. District Court,
In Hessley v. Minneapolis S. Const. Co.
In Warheim v. Melrose Granite Co. supra, page 275, the workman received compensation for the total loss of the use of an eye. After the injury he was able to read print held at a certain angle from the eye and to recognize objects coming toward him except when they approached directly in front of him. A second injury to the same eye necessitated its removal. He was awarded full compensation on the basis of a loss of the eye. The result was that he received double compensation, but nevertheless *320 the second award was sustained, as it had to be unless the court declined to follow the Hessley case to its logical conclusion.
In the Hessley and Warheim cases, the workman lost something more than a sightless eyeball. In the present case that is all he lost, and the question is, should he receive the same compensation as a workman who has lost a perfect eye?
Speaking generally, compensation acts attempt to do approximate justice by making good to a certain extent the loss resulting from the impairment or destruction of the earning power of workmen, caused by industrial accidents, whether attended or not by negligence on the part of employers.
It was remarked in Madera Sugar Pine Co. v. Industrial Commission,
But in the Hessley case attention was called to the plain language of the act, which gives compensation for the loss of a member of the body without reference to ability of the member to perform its natural functions. In the application of this provision, inequalities in the matter of compensation cannot be avoided. Sometimes what is equivalent to double compensation will be made. Probably no statute can be framed which will put all workmen on an equal footing. This was pointed out by Mr. Justice Holt in the Warheim case. There is manifest inequality in the operation of a law which adopts the same scale of compensation whether a useful or a useless member of the body is lost. Its seeming injustice is *321 strikingly illustrated by contrasting this case with the Garwin case. In that case the workman had but one good eye. He lost it and became totally blind. His earning capacity was virtually destroyed, but, under the provisions of the statute, he received no greater compensation than this workman who lost an eyeball, useless for any purpose except to fill the socket now filled with a glass eye, whose other eye is as good as it was before the accident and whose earning capacity has not been impaired in the slightest degree. The inequalities are glaring, but, if they are to be removed, it must be by legislation. Our duty is to take the law as we find it and administer it in accordance with the plain meaning of the language employed.
The award of compensation is affirmed.
Dissenting Opinion
To me, it seems not to have been the intention of the Workmen's Compensation Act to allow compensation for the loss of a wholly useless member of the body. In the Hessley and Warheim cases, we were considering the loss of members which, at the time of the last injury, had a substantial remaining use. They were of appreciable aid in the functioning of their bodies and thereby added to the physical capacity and employability of their possessors. That very important and determinative element is absent from this case — hence this dissent. *322