Case Name: CADWALLADER v. SHOLL et al.
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1951-07-12
Citations: 196 F.2d 14
Docket Number: No. 10748
Parties: CADWALLADER v. SHOLL et al.
Judges: 
Reporter: Federal Reporter 2d Series
Volume: 196
Pages: 14–20

Head Matter:
CADWALLADER v. SHOLL et al.
No. 10748.
United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.
Argued March 15, 1951.
Decided July 12, 1951.
On Rehearing Argued Nov. 16, 1951.
As Amended Feb. 15, 1952.
Writ of Certiorari Denied June 2, 1952.
See 72 S.Ct. 1061.
Prettyman, Circuit Judge, dissented.
Ralph F. Berlow, Washington, D. C., with whom, William T. Hannan, Washington, D.C., was on the brief, for appellant.
Ward E. Boote, Assistant Solicitor, Department of Labor, Employees’ Compensation Bureau, Washington, D. C., with whom George Morris Fay, United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Joseph M. Howard, Assistant United States Attorney, Washington, D. C., were on the 'brief, for appellee Britton. Charles M. Irelan, Washington, D. C, appointed United States Attorney subsequent to the time brief was filed, also entered an appearance for appellee Britton.
G. A. Chadwick, Jr., Washington, D. C., for appellees Sholl and National Casualty-Company.
Before EDGERTON, PRETTYMAN, and BAZELON, Circuit Judges.
Original opinion vacated.

Opinion:
On Rehearing.
EDGERTON, Circuit Judge.
This appeal is from a judgment dismissing a claim for workmen's compensation. Contact with flour, in claimant's employment as a baker, caused dermatitis which disabled her from July, 1944 to October, 1946. Her employer's insurer paid her compensation, without claim or award, for that time. In December, 1946 she suffered a recurrence of dermatitis which wholly disabled her from January, 1947 to the time of the hearing'before the Deputy Commissioner in 1949. In November, 1947 she filed a claim to compensation for this recurrence of disability. The Deputy Commissioner rejected the claim as not timely filed and the District Court sustained his action.
Section 13(a) of the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, 33 U.S.C.A. § 913(a), 44 Stat. 1432, provides that the right to compensation is "barred unless a claim therefor is filed within one year 'after the injury' or one year after the last payment made without an award.
The Deputy Commissioner found that between appellant's first attack of dermatitis and its "recurrence" there was an interval during which she "was free of the symptoms of the said dermatitis and she was able to work." We understand the finding to mean that during this interval she did not appear to have dermatitis. The Deputy Commissioner did not expressly find and the record does not show whether appellant (1) resumed work during the interval and thereby brought about the recurrence of the disease or (2) did not resume work, in which case the second attack of the disease was a consequence of the previous work that had caused the previous attack. On either hypothesis we think appellant's claim was timely because it was filed within one year after the disease recurred.
"The term 'injury' means accidental injury or death arising out of and in the course of employment, and such occupational disease or infection as arises naturally out of such employment or as naturally or unavoidably results from such accidental injury .*." 44 Stat. 1425, 33 U.S.C. § 902(2). Having in mind the basic purpose of the Compensation Act we think this means that any attack, whether an initial one or one following a sympton-free period, if it arises naturally out of the employment is an "injury". There is nothing in the Act to suggest a contrary intention.
In our opinion Pillsbury v. United Engineering Co., 342 U.S. 197, 199, 72 S.Ct. 223, 224, does not bear on the question. It determines only that when an employee consciously suffers injury on a given date, but suffers no disability until a later date, the injury and not the disability starts the running of the one-year period of limitation on the filing of claims. The Supreme Court said: "Each of the claimants here was immediately aware of his injury, received medical treatment, and suffered continuous pain. We are not here dealing with a latent injury or an occupational disease." The present appellant suffered her second attack of dermatitis in December, 1946, became wholly disabled in January, 1947, and filed her claim in November, 1947. Therefore even if the Pillsbury rule were extended to occupational diseases, its distinction between injury and disability would still be immaterial here.
Except in connection with the relatively small matter of the statutory one-week waiting period we do not see that our understanding of the law tends, as the dissenting opinion suggests, to prevent or reduce compensation in future cases.
Though we formerly thought otherwise, we now think the question is one of law for the courts to decide. We think O'Leary v. Brown-Pacific-Maxon, 340 U.S. 504, 71 S.Ct. 470, 95 L.Ed. 483, is not to the contrary. There the Supreme Court held that the Deputy Commissioner did not exceed his authority in awarding compensation for the death of an employee who was drowned, on the island of Guam, in attempting to rescue other men. The employee, who was off duty, started his rescue attempt from a recreation area that the employer maintained for the use of employees. The question was whether the drowning of a particular employee was sufficiently related to a particular employment in a particular place so that it might foe said to arise "out of and in the course of" the employment. The Deputy Commissioner treated this question as one of "fact" and the Supreme Court agreed. The Court said: "We hold only that rescue attempts such as that before us are not necessarily excluded from the coverage of the Act as the kind of- conduct that employees engage in as frolics of their own. The conclusion concerns a combination of happenings and the inferences drawn from them. In part at least, the inferences presuppose applicable standards for assessing the simple, external facts. Yet the standards are not so severable from the experience of industry nor of such a nature as to be peculiarly appropriate for independent judicial ascertainment as 'questions of law.' " 340 U.S. at pages 507-508, 71 S.Ct. at page 472. The question in that case, though partly generic, had peculiar specific elements. New questions are more purely generic than the one now before us: does the term "injury" in the one-year clause of the Compensation Act include recurrence of disease? Both the Deputy Commissioner and the District Court treated the question as generic. Neither treated it as a question of "fact". No one contends that appellant's recurrence of dermatitis had specific elements that might differentiate it for present purposes from other recurrences of occupational diseases. We think that in this case the question is quite severable from the experience of industry and peculiarly appropriate for independent judicial ascertainment as a question of law.
Reversed.
. Applicable in the District of Columbia as a workmen's compensation act. D.C. Code (1940) § 36-501, 45 Stat. 600.
. Perhaps this is implicit in the finding that she "was able to work."