Case Name: HAKALA v. BURROUGHS CORPORATION (ON REHEARING)
Court: Michigan Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Michigan
Decision Date: 1974-12-19
Citations: 399 Mich. 162
Docket Number: Docket No. 55246
Parties: HAKALA v BURROUGHS CORPORATION (ON REHEARING)
Judges: Kavanagh, C. J., and Fitzgerald, Lindemer, and Ryan, JJ., concurred with Levin, J.
Reporter: Michigan Reports
Volume: 399
Pages: 162–183

Head Matter:
HAKALA v BURROUGHS CORPORATION (ON REHEARING)
Docket No. 55246.
Submitted September 13, 1974
(Calendar No. 16).
Decided December 19, 1974,
393 Mich 153. Rehearing granted 395 Mich 922.
Submitted on rehearing January 27, 1976
(Calendar No. 14).
Decided December 30, 1976.
Edward J. Hakala claimed workmen’s compensation benefits for total and permanent disability against Burroughs Corporation and the Second Injury Fund, based on the loss of his right hand and of some of the fingers on his left hand in his employment at Burroughs when he had a prior impairment of the vision in his left eye. The Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board denied benefits because the plaintiff retained more than 20% of normal vision in his left eye with the use of corrective glasses. The Court of Appeals, V. J. Brennan, P. J., and Danhof and Bashara, JJ., affirmed on the ground that the plaintiffs loss of vision was not caused by an injury (Docket No. 13842). Plaintiff appeals. Held:
The Supreme Court unanimously voted to reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and to hold that an injured worker’s prior loss need not be due to an injury in order to qualify for permanent and total disability benefits from the Second Injury Fund. The legislative purpose behind the Second Injury Fund was to enhance the prospects for employment of certain handicapped persons who had previously sustained specific losses by relieving an employer of liability for payment of workmen’s compensation for an injury in an amount greater than that for an injury to a person not so handicapped.
Justice Levin, with Chief Justice Kavanagh and Justices Fitzgerald, Lindemer, and Ryan concurring, held that until the Legislature speaks with greater clarity the courts should decide second injury cases guided primarily by the legislative purpose to help the handicapped obtain and maintain employment. Neither uncorrected nor corrected vision is necessarily the standard by which loss of an eye is to be measured in all cases. The conclusion that an uncorrected vision standard should be employed for determining entitlement to specific loss benefits where a worker suffers a work-related injury to his eye does not compel use of an uncorrected vision test in all cases. The ultimate question is whether the "first loss” (which need not be work-related and need not be the result of an injury), in this case the loss of vision, was a permanent disability within the legislative purpose in the Second Injury Fund of aiding the handicapped in obtaining and maintaining employment. The Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board erred in deciding this claim on the basis of whether the plaintiff’s vision could be corrected rather than whether he was permanently disabled in the form of the loss of an eye.
References for Points in Headnotes
[1-10] 82 Am Jur 2d, Workmen’s Compensation §§ 343, 344, 346.
Workmen’s Compensation: compensation for loss or impairment of eyesight. 142 ALR 822
Remanded to the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board for determination of whether the plaintiff’s loss of vision rendered him permanently disabled for purposes of the Second Injury Fund Act.
Justice Coleman, dissenting in part, would affirm the decision of the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board as to the test of loss of vision to be used on the ground that the use of glasses by both the young and the old is a very ordinary occurrence. Vision in excess of 20% of normal, when corrected by the use of eyeglasses, does not meet the statutory test of industrial loss of vision. The original purpose of the Second Injury Fund was to encourage the hiring of handicapped persons. To interpret the act to allow a person who "always had” poor uncorrected vision to be treated as a person with a "first injury”, although the corrected vision is within normal range, would create a new class of handicapped persons, the foreseeable result of which would militate against hiring people wearing eye glasses or contact lenses.
Justice Williams, dissenting in part in a memorandum opinion, voted to apply the test found in case law, and require that the plaintiff’s eye be tested without the benefit of any artificial device to determine whether he had an 80% loss of vision under the terms of the statute. Under the facts of this case the plaintiff would, therefore, be eligible for benefits from the Second Injury Fund.
48 Mich App 639; 211 NW2d 60 (1973) reversed.
Opinion of the Court
1. Workmen’s Compensation — Permanent and Total Disability— Second Injury Fund — Statutes.
An injured worker’s prior loss need not have been due to an injury in order for him to qualify for permanent and total disability benefits from the Second Injury Fund.
2. Workmen’s Compensation — Second Injury Fund — Legislative Purpose.
The legislative purpose behind the creation of the Second Injury Fund was to enhance the prospects for employment of certain handicapped persons who had previously sustained specific losses by relieving an employer of liability for payment of workmen’s compensation for an injury in an amount greater than that for an injury to a person not so handicapped.
3. Workmen’s Compensation — Permanent Disability — Loss of Eye —Vision Standard.
The rule that an uncorrected vision standard should be employed for purposes of determining entitlement to specific loss benefits under the Workmen’s Compensation Act where a worker suffers a work-related injury to his eye does not compel use of an uncorrected vision test in all cases; the statute does not indicate whether a corrected or uncorrected test should be applied, and the decision in second injury cases should be guided primarily by the legislative purpose in creating the Second Injury Fund, to help the handicapped obtain and maintain employment (MCL 412.8a, 412.10; MSA 17.158[1], 17.160).
4. Workmen’s Compensation — Loss of Vision — Permanent Disability-Second Injury Fund.
It may be said that all persons with an 80% loss of vision, regardless of whether it can be corrected, have a permanent disability but that is not the sense in which the Legislature used that phrase in defining a permanent disability in the section of the Workmen’s Compensation Act concerning the Second Injury Fund (MCL 412.8a; MSA 17.158[1]).
5. Workmen’s Compensation — Second Injury Fund — First Loss— Construction of Statutes.
The Legislature has provided a general definition of "first loss” (which need not be work-related) for Second Injury Fund purposes and left to the courts the task of applying it; the ultimate question in deciding how to measure vision so as to determine whether there has been a "first loss” of permanent disability in the form of loss of an eye is whether the first loss was a permanent disability within the legislative purpose of aiding the handicapped in obtaining and maintaining employment; the Legislature did not intend that persons suffering nothing worse than near- or farsightedness should be considered perma nently disabled and therefore eligible for Second Injury Fund benefits should a "second” loss occur (MCL 412.8a; MSA 17.158[1]).
6. Workmen’s Compensation — Second Injury Fund — Loss of Vision —First Loss.
A workmen’s compensation case should be remanded to the appeal board for determination whether claimant’s loss of vision, which was 20/300 uncorrected and 20/50 minus one corrected, rendered him permanently disabled, in the sense that term is used for purposes of Second Injury Fund coverage, before he suffered a second loss where the appeal board erred in deciding the claim on the basis of whether claimant’s vision could be corrected, rather than whether he was permanently disabled in the form of loss of an eye (MCL 412.8a; MSA 17.158[1]).
Separate Opinion
Coleman, J.
See headnotes 1 and 2.
7. Workmen’s Compensation — Second Injury Fund.
The original purpose of the Second Injury Fund was to encourage hiring of the handicapped.
8. Workmen’s Compensation — Glasses—Vision Loss.
The use of glasses is a very ordinary occurrence both by the young and the old; vision in excess of 20% of normal, when corrected by the use of eyeglasses, does not meet the statutory test of industrial loss of vision.
Memorandum Opinion
Williams, J.
See headnotes 1 and 2.
9. Workmen’s Compensation — Vision Loss — Uncorrected Vision— Second Injury Fund.
The degree of vision loss is measured in terms of uncorrected vision when a claim is made for Second Injury Fund beneñts based on a prior loss of 80% vision in one eye.
10. Workmen’s Compensation — Vision Loss — Second Injury Fund.
A workmen’s compensation claimant met the statutory deñnition for the loss of an eye and is eligible for Second Injury Fund beneñts where in the course of his employment he suffered the amputation of his right hand and portions of the ñrst and second fíngers of his left hand and before that injury had less than 20% uncorrected vision in his left eye.
Kelman, Loria, Downing, Schneider & Simpson (by Robert W Howes), for plaintiff.
Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General, Robert A. Derengoski, Solicitor General, and David J. Watts and A. C. Stoddard, Assistants Attorney General, for defendant Second Injury Fund.
Carl Mitseff, for defendant Burroughs Corporation.

Opinion:
Levin, J.
I concur in part I of the memorandum opinion but dissent as to part II.
In 1962, Edward Hakala suffered a compensable injury while working for Burroughs Corporation. He suffered the loss of his right hand and portions of the first and second fingers of his left hand. Burroughs Corporation voluntarily paid workmen's compensation benefits for these specific losses.
In 1968, Hakala filed for second injury benefits (§ 8a of part II of the act) claiming that when he suffered the compensable injury resulting in loss of a hand he had a "permanent disability in the form of the loss of a[n] eye."
At the time Hakala lost his right hand, the vision in his left eye was 20/300 uncorrected, 20/ 50 minus one corrected.
The parties appear to agree that reference should be made to the specific loss provision, § 10(a) of part II (1965 PA 44, part 2, § 10) where the loss of an eye is defined, "for the purpose of this act [as an] 80% loss of vision in 1 eye".
Hakala's vision loss uncorrected exceeds 80%; corrected, his vision loss is less than 80%.
Hakala contends that the proper test by which to determine whether he had suffered "permanent disability in the form of the loss of an eye" is the statutory test ("80% loss of vision") as interpreted by Lindsay v Glennie Industries, Inc, 379 Mich 573; 153 NW2d 642 (1967), and adopted by Hilton v Oldsmobile Division of General Motors Corp, 390 Mich 43; 210 NW2d 316 (1973)—i.e., 80% loss of vision uncorrected.
In Lindsay, this Court said, in a case where the worker had suffered a work-related injury, that for purposes of determining entitlement to specific loss benefits under § 10(a) an uncorrected vision test would be utilized. In Hilton, we extended application of the uncorrected vision standard to Second Injury Fund benefits where the claimant's first loss was removal of the natural lens.
Burroughs Corporation and the Second Injury Fund counter that Hilton and Lindsay, both involving removal of the natural lens, are unique cases and represent exceptions to the usual rule of corrected vision as the standard for determining loss of an eye.
I
The question is whether Hakala's loss of vision, conceding that it fits within the Lindsay definition for determining specific loss of an eye for purposes of § 10(a), constituted "permanent disability " contemplated by the Legislature when it provided for Second Injury Fund benefits in § 8a.
The legislative purpose in creating the Second Injury Fund was "to enhance the prospects for employment of certain handicapped persons who had previously sustained specific losses, so that they and their families would have a means of livelihood". Verberg v Simplicity Pattern Co, 357 Mich 636, 643; 99 NW2d 508 (1959).
Section 10(a), the specific loss provision, defining loss of an eye "for the purpose of this act [as an] 80% loss of vision", does not indicate whether a corrected or uncorrected vision test should be applied. The Legislature has here, as in other statutes, adopted an inartful standard and left to the courts the task of devising common-sense rules for its application in particular factual situations. Our conclusion in Lindsay that an uncorrected vision standard should be employed for purposes of determining entitlement to specific loss benefits where a worker suffers a work-related injury to his eye does not compel use of an uncorrected vision test in all cases. Until the Legislature speaks with greater clarity, the courts should decide second injury cases guided primarily by the legislative purpose in enacting the Second Injury Fund — to help the handicapped obtain and maintain employment.
We agree with Justice Coleman that the memorandum opinion portends results not in accord with "the original purpose of the Second Injury Fund, which was to encourage hiring of the handicapped", but we do not agree with her that corrected vision is the standard by which loss of an eye is to be measured in all workmen's compensation cases.
These cases, involving claims arising out of disparate factual situations and based on different sections of a frequently amended act, do not lend themselves to flat rules.
II
The memorandum opinion rests on the Lindsay construction of § 10(a), which, as amended in 1943, defined the loss of an eye as an "80% loss of vision". It states that "Lindsay held that the plain meaning of this amended language required the eye to be tested without the benefit of any artificial device".
Lindsay concerned payment for specific loss of an eye as the result of an injury arising out of and in the course of claimant's employment. In that context, this Court held that "[t]he surgical removal of the natural lens made necessary by an injury arising out of and in the course of claimant's employment is loss of an eye within the meaning of the amended statute." 379 Mich 573, 578 (1967). So saying, however, gives no reason for applying this rule to a second-injury claim.
To merely state that the "plain meaning" of the § 10(a) statutory language, defining the loss of an eye as an "80% loss of vision", requires an uncorrected vision test for Second Injury Fund purposes ignores the act's silence on this point and eschews proper analysis.
Many cases which raise issues of statutory construction can be decided either way. To contend, without more, that the meaning of a statute is "plain" is to ignore that the parties have in good faith litigated the question to the highest court in this state, that other courts have reached contrary results on similar statutory language, that Justice Coleman has presented for consideration a contrary, yet maintainable, position and that the appeal board in this case applied a corrected loss of vision test and found that Hakala "has not met the definition of permanent and total disability within the meaning of [the Second Injury Fund provision]."
Carl Llewellyn observed, only infrequently "a legislative intent with some concrete reality can be uncovered in circumstance or legislative history. For the rest, the court's work is not to ñnd, any more than it is with case law. It is to do, responsibly, fittingly, intelligently, with and within the given frame." (Emphasis by author.) Llewellyn, The Common Law Tradition, Deciding Appeals, p 382.
The memorandum opinion suggests that all persons with an 80% loss of vision, regardless of whether it can be corrected, have a permanent disability entitling them to Second Injury Fund benefits if they suffer "second" injuries.
While we agree that in one sense it may be said that all persons with an 80% loss of vision, regardless of whether it can be corrected, have a "permanent disability", we do not agree that that is the sense in which the Legislature used that phrase in section 8a.
As noted by Justice Coleman, the uncorrected vision of at least two of the Justices on this Court and countless other citizens of this state is 20% or less (i.e., at least 80% loss). In this connection it is relevant, as stated in part I of the memorandum opinion, that the first loss for Second Injury Fund purposes need not be work-related and need not be the result of an injury. See Hilton, supra, at 47. The Legislature has provided a general definition of the first loss for Second Injury Fund purposes ("permanent disability in the form of the loss of an eye") and left to the courts the task of applying it to claims arising out of various factual situations.
The ultimate question is whether the first loss was a permanent disability within the legislative purpose of aiding the handicapped in obtaining and maintaining employment. We are considering not just the 80%-loss-of-vision provision in isolation, but in the context of eligibility for second injury benefits. Surely, the Legislature did not intend that persons suffering nothing worse than near- or farsightedness should be considered permanently disabled and therefore eligible for Second Injury Fund benefits should a "second" loss occur.
We are not sufficiently informed as to the true nature of Hakala's condition to allow us to decide this case. The appeal board erred in deciding this claim on the basis of whether Hakala's vision could be corrected, not whether Hakala was "permanently disabled in the form of the loss of a[n] eye"
We should remand to the appeal board for determination whether Hakala's loss of vision rendered him permanently disabled in the sense that term is used for purposes of Second Injury Fund coverage. In retrospect, it may have been better to have remanded Hilton to the appeal board for further consideration rather than to have decided that case as a matter of law.
We would remand to the appeal board for further proceedings.
Kavanagh, C. J., and Fitzgerald, Lindemer, and Ryan, JJ., concurred with Levin, J.
"If an employee has at the time of injury permanent disability in the form of the loss of a hand or arm or foot or leg or eye and at the time of such injury incurs further permanent disability in the form of the loss of a hand or arm or foot or leg or eye, he shall be deemed to he totally and permanently disabled and shall be paid, from the funds provided in this section, compensation for total and permanent disability after subtracting the amount of compensation received by the employee for both such losses. The payment of compensation under this section shall begin at the conclusion of the payments made for the second permanent disability". 1948 CL 412.8a; MSA 17.158(1) (now MCLA 418.521; MSA 17.237[521]).
This Court held that the claimant who, as the result of an injury-arising out of and in the course of his employment, lost the industrial use of his left leg and who at the age of ten had undergone a bilateral cataract extraction, qualified for payments from the Second Injury Fund. Relying on Lindsay as authority as to specific loss, this Court determined that Hilton, who had the natural lenses removed from his eyes, qualified for Second Injury Fund benefits regardless of the fact that with contact lens and glasses, his corrected vision in both eyes was 20/25.
The Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board found the ultimate question was whether a corrected or an uncorrected vision standard should be applied:
"If, as plaintiff contends, the Court in Lindsay has established the rule that the test of uncorrected vision is the proper test in such cases then he should prevail. If, on the other hand, Lindsay is not applicable to the facts of this case, then the Court's prior holdings in Hirschkorn v Fiege Desk Co, 184 Mich 239 [150 NW 851 (1915)] and Cline v Studebaker Corp, 189 Mich 514 [155 NW 519; 1916C LRA 1139 (1915)], wherein corrected vision loss was the test, controls in this case."
The board then distinguished Lindsay on the ground that in that case the natural lens of the eye was removed. Hakala, having suffered nothing more than a loss of vision which was corrected with glasses, was found not to have lost an eye so as to qualify as permanently disabled within the meaning of the Second Injury Fund provision.
We appreciate that the Legislature has for purposes of § 10(b) of the act eschewed an "in fact" determination of total and permanent disability. The Legislature adopted specific definitions of total and permanent disability thereby limiting the scope of § 10(b) coverage. Thus, a person who is in fact totally and permanently disabled may not receive benefits under § 10(b) unless he can fit within one of the enumerated definitions; likewise, a person who fits within the literal reading of a specific definition may receive benefits even though he is not in fact disabled.
We note, without expressing either a favorable or unfavorable opinion, that the Court of Appeals is incorporating a disabled, unemployable concept into cases under § 10(b). See Sprute v Herlihy Mid-Continent Co, 32 Mich App 574; 189 NW2d 89 (1971), and Legut v Detroit Window Cleaning Co, 54 Mich App 404; 221 NW2d 232 (1974), leave to appeal granted. 393 Mich 767 (1974).
Hakala is not claiming under § 10(b). Hakala seeks benefits under § 8(a) as a person who had suffered a "permanent disability in the form of the loss of an eye."
See fn 1 of the memorandum opinion.