Opinion ID: 1478763
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the problem of statutory coverage.

Text: Respondent contends that petitioner's ailment should not be deemed covered by the occupational disease section of the workmen's compensation legislation. The statute, N.J.S.A. 34:15-31, provides: For the purposes of this article, the phrase `compensable occupational disease' shall include all diseases arising out of and in the course of employment, which are due to causes and conditions which are or were characteristic of or peculiar to a particular trade, occupation, process or employment, or which diseases are due to the exposure of any employee to a cause thereof arising out of and in the course of his employment. (Emphasis added.) The suggestion is that this claim cannot be considered compensable unless the chrome dust constituted an allergen, i.e., a substance to which Bober was allergic. In other words, unless the allergic bronchial asthma was directly produced by a dust possessing the inherent and recognized capacity to create an asthma of that type, the exposure was not to a cause thereof arising out of and in the course of the employment. But the legislative language, which demands liberal construction to the end that its beneficent purposes be served, does not justify such a constricted interpretation. Under the proof here, the chrome dust was an irritant which so sensitized the latent allergic bronchial asthma as to cause it to move from the dormant to an active state. If it were not for that employment exposure, the predisposition would have remained quiescent. So the dust must be treated as a cause in the legal sense and thus to satisfy the mandate of the statute. Cf. Duncan v. T.I. McCormack Trucking Co., supra ; Giambattista v. Thomas A. Edison, 32 N.J. Super. 103, 114 ( App. Div. 1954); Le Lenko v. Wilson H. Lee Co., 128 Conn. 499, 24 A. 2 d 253 ( Sup. Ct. Err. 1942); Grain Handling Co. v. Sweeney, 102 F. 2 d 464 (2 Cir. 1939), certiorari denied 308 U.S. 570, 60 S.Ct. 83, 84 L.Ed. 478 (1939). The Grain Handling Co. case arose under the Federal Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, 33 U.S.C.A. § 901 et seq., which does not have as comprehensive a definition of occupational disease as is contained in our law. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that a disability caused by the activation of a dormant tuberculosis as the result of inhalation of grain dust in ships' holds, was such a disease. Judge Learned Hand had this to say: I can see no difference between a fresh infection and the awakening of an old one. The statute is not concerned with pathology, but with industry disability; and a disease is no disease until it manifests itself. Few adults are not diseased, if by that one means only that the seeds of future troubles are not already planted; and it is a common place that health is a constant warfare between the body and its enemies; an infection mastered, though latent, is no longer a disease, industrially speaking, until the individual's resistance is again so far lowered that he succumbs. The process of statutory interpretation falls short of its high function if a strict reading of this section of the Workmen's Compensation Act results in a narrowing of the coverage which a less literal reading would preserve. The judgment of the Appellate Division is reversed and the award of compensation is reinstated. For reversal  Chief Justice WEINTRAUB, and Justices WACHENFELD, BURLING, JACOBS, FRANCIS and PROCTOR  6. For affirmance  None.