Opinion ID: 1265451
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Pre-1977 Disability-Based Compensation Scheme

Text: When first enacted in 1915, Oklahoma's regime for delivery of benefits to an injured worker was designed to restore lost earnings for compensable harm from hazardous employment. [7] This institutional design established four categories of disability-based benefits (permanent total, temporary total, permanent partial and temporary partial). [8] The key term disability was not defined by statute. The court eventually came to measure it by a worker's capacity to perform ordinary manual or mechanical labor. [9] An injury to a specific, scheduled member of the body (a classified disability) was measured by the number of weeks in the member schedule, [10] while one to an  unclassified part of the body fell under the other cases clause of § 22 [11] and was compensated on the basis of percentage disability to the body as a whole. [12]