This is an appeal from a circuit court order affirming the Division of Labor and Management's decision to dismiss Huida Streyle’s petition for worker’s compensation because of her failure to provide written or actual notice of a work-related injury. We reverse and remand.
Huida Streyle (claimant) is a fifty-year-old woman with an eighth grade education and a history of back problems. She applied for employment with the Steiner Corporation in 1976 and asked for a job with “no heavy lifting.” She was hired as a laundress.
On August 15, 1979, claimant had a hysterectomy. She returned to work on October 29, 1979. That day, claimant’s job was to reach into deep laundry baskets, hang the contents on hangers, and run the hangers through a steam cabinet. At about 11:00 a.m., as she reached into a basket, claimant felt a sharp pain run through her back. She immediately told Brian Berry, the plant manager, “that my back, something must have happened to my back. My back is hurting.”
Claimant continued to work on October 29 and the following two days. During this time, she told her supervisor, Joan Steen, that she could no longer handle her job because, “my back was bothering me.” Steen noted, however, that back complaints were common during claimant’s employment with Steiner Corporation.
Claimant did not work after October 31, 1979. She conferred with her doctor about her back pain. On November 12, 1979, claimant submitted a note from her doctor advising Steiner Corporation that claimant needed a job “more sitting in nature.”
SDCL 62-7-10 requires employees to give employers written notice of a work-related injury within thirty days of the injury. Written notice is excused if “it can be shown that the employer, his agent, or representative had knowledge of the injury or death.” SDCL 62-7-10. Claimant concedes that she did not provide written notice of the October 29 injury within thirty days. She argues, however, that Steiner Corporation had knowledge of her injury. SDCL 62-7-10. We agree.
The current trend is to excuse lack of notice whenever the employer acquired actual knowledge of the injury or accident, no matter how he acquired it. 3 Larson, The Law of Workmen’s Compensation, § 78.31(a) (1982). We have held that while the Worker’s Compensation Act should be accorded a liberal construction, its terms and conditions cannot be ignored.
Mellquist v. Dakota Printing Co.,
In this case, Steiner Corporation had sufficient knowledge to indicate the possibility of a compensable injury. It is true that Steiner Corporation was aware of claimant’s history of back pain and recent hysterectomy. Claimant’s immediate complaints, however, to the plant manager and her direct supervisor that “something must have happened to my back” and that she could no longer handle her job because of her back were more than her recurring complaints of pain. Coupled with her subsequent absence from work and her doctor’s advice to change to a sitting job, they put Steiner Corporation on notice that something out of the ordinary had occurred,
Rowe v. Semet-Solvay Division Allied Chemical & Dye Corp.,
We hold only that Steiner Corporation had notice sufficient to meet the requirements of SDCL 62-7-10. Whether claimant’s injury was in fact work-connected and whether the injury is compensable are issues to be resolved on remand.
The order is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.
Notes
A physical predisposition to injury will not necessarily defeat a worker's compensation claim. *867 Mellquist v. Dakota Printing Co., supra.