Court Opinion

ID: 9740981
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:46:39.60204+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:21.302749
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
{dissenting). I regret that I cannot join in the opinion of the Chief Justice. It is my belief that his opinion perpetuates a misconstruction of a remedial statute and amendment thereto and that the law is growing more confused with the passage of time and the accumulation of cases.
Claim is made under part 2 of the act. The theory of the plaintiff is that he suffered an “accident” at *192Ms work. The Chief Justice concludes that he did not. I cannot agree.
What is the meaning of the word “accident” as employed in the workmen’s compensation act? Our Court has frequently and recently divided on the question. Much of our present difficulty traces back .to language employed by Mr. Justice Stone in Adams v. Acme White Lead & Color Works (1914), 182 Mich 157 (LRA1916A, 283, Ann Cas 1916D, 689, 6 NCCA 482). For that reason alone I will examine ■it in some detail. The case involved lead poisoning, an ailment which we would today class as an occupational disease and, in fact, it was so classified by the then industrial accident hoard (p 158). The claim was made on behalf of the injured workman that our act, in granting compensation for “a personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment,” was broad enough to cover occupational diseases. The Court held not. It held that the act required an accidental injury. As to what was an accident, it cited and quoted (p 164) from Hensey v. White, (1900) 1 QB 481, 485 (69 LJQB 188, 81 LT 767) the following language, ■ which r in essence' is found in our cases up to the present time:
“ ‘I think the idea of something fortuitous and unexpected is involved in both words, “peril” or “accident.” ’ ”
The Hensey Case, so relied upon in both language and, subsequently, in principle, warrants critical examination. It was a case in which.a workman was injured (ruptured) while “doing his ordinary work in the ordinary way,” there being nothing fortuitous ■ in what happened. For this reason it was held that he had not suffered an accident and recovery was denied.
There are 2 difficulties with this English decision. The first is that such construction of the word “ac*193cident” does violence to our language. Words in a statute should receive their ordinary meanings, unless the context forces some subtle use. In our usual speech, when a man goes to his work and breaks his leg, or ruptures himself in the performance of such work, .even though it was merely his' ordinary work done in the ordinary way, he has suffered an accident at his work. It is no less an accident, of course, if something falls from the ceiling and hurts him. That, too, is an “accident.” The idea of the unexpected is predominant, and it is present in both uses of the word. The difference in the uses, putting it very roughly, is that the one use refers to a cause and the other to an effect. But both uses are permissible and both form a part of our constant, daily speech.
Not only did the construction of the English court in the Hensey Case do violence to the language, but also to the plain purpose, of the act. The statute, as well as the employer, takes human beings as it finds them. Not all are stalwart and able. The weak and the stumbling must also work, and, if they are injured in their work, even though one stronger might not have been, they are equally protected. Hills v. Oval Wood Dish Co., 191 Mich 411. There are some who complain that this means opening wide the flood gates, turning a workmen’s compensation act into general insurance for the sick and needy. Not so. The claimant still must prove a direct causal connection between work and injury. This is the essential link. Lacking it, the act does not speak. But if the injury comes from the work, compensation should be paid, even though one of more robust physique would not have suffered therefrom.
Not surprising is it, then, to find that the Hensey Case was overruled, in the land of its birth, after a very brief span of life. The point at issue, the precise point now plaguing our commission, our *194bench, and our bar, was explored in detail by the highest English court in Fenton v. J. Thorley & Co., Ltd., (1903) AC 443 (72 LJKB 787, 89 LT 314), some 10 years prior to our decision in the Adams Case. This Fenton Case was, like the quoted Eensey Case, a rupture case. According to Lord Macnaghten (p 445):
“Fenton was a man of ordinary health and strength. There was no evidence of any slip, or wrench, or sudden jerk. It may be taken that the injury occurred while the man was engaged in his ordinary work, and in doing or trying to do the very thing which he meant to 'accomplish.”
Lord Macnaghten then continued, commenting on Hensey v. White, supra (pp 445, 446):
“The court of appeal held that the injury which Fenton sustained was not ‘injury by accident’ within the meaning of the act. In so holding they followed an earlier decision of the court in the case of Hensey v. White, which in its circumstances is not distinguishable from the present case. In Hensey v. White a passage was cited from the opinion of Halsbury L.C. in Hamilton, Fraser & Co. v. Pandorf & Co.,* in which his lordship said: T think the idea of something fortuitous and unexpected is involved in both words “peril” or “accident.” ’ Founding themselves upon that expression, the learned judges of the court of appeal held in Hensey v. White, as they have held here, that there was no accident, because (to quote the leading judgment) there was ‘an entire lack of the fortuitous element.’ What the man ‘was doing,’ it was said, ‘he was doing deliberately, and in the ordinary course of his work, and that which happened was in no sense a fortuitous event.’ To the expression as used by Lord Halsbury in the passage in which it occurs, no possible objection can be taken; but it is, I think, to be regretted that the *195word .‘fortuitous’ should have been applied to the term ‘injury by accident’ in the workmen’s compensation act. If it means exactly the same thing as ‘accidental,’ the use of the word is superfluous. If it introduces the elemeint of haphazard (if I may use the expression), an element which is not necessarily involved in the word- ‘accidental,’ its use, I venture to think, is misleading, and not warranted by anything in the act.”
Lord Robertson’s opinion concurred. Addressing himself to the meaning of the word “accident” he held as follows (p 452):
“Much poring over the word ‘accident’ by learned counsel has evolved some subtle reasoning about these sections. I confess that the arguments seem to me to be entirely over the heads of parliament, of employers, and of workmen. No one out of a law court would ever hestitate to say that this man met with an accident, and when all is said, I think this use of the word is perfectly right. The word ‘accident’ is not made inappropriate by the fact that the man hurt himself. This use is indeed directly sanctioned by the act itself, for s. 1, sub-s. 2 (c),* plainly implies that an accident giving right to compensation may be attributable to the fault of the injured man himself. In the present instance the man by an act of over-exertion broke the wall of his abdomen. Suppose he had by the same act broken his leg, the question would he the same. But suppose the wheel had yielded and been broken by exactly the same act, surely the breakage would be rightly described as accidental. Yet the argument against the application of the act is in this case again exactly the same — that there is nothing accidental in the matter, as the man did what he intended to do. The fallacy of the argument lies in leaving out of account the miscalculation of forces, or inadvertence *196to them, which is the element of mischance, mishap, or misadventure.”
The house of lords, then, and upon this reasoning, overruled the case of Hensey v. White, supra. In the same decision the court, through Lord Macnaghten (p 448), used the expression, also quoted in the Adams Case (p 164), that:
“The expression ‘accident’ is used in the popular and ordinary sense of the word as denoting an unlooked-for mishap or an untoward event which is not expected or designed.”
Not only is it clear from the quotations heretofore cited that the court completely rejected the theory of.the fortuitous event (as distinguished from an incident in the course of ordinary work) as the sole meaning of the word “accident” but Lord Macnaghten explains in detail (p 446) the meaning of the term “mishap” in the above quotation, employed by our Court in the Adams Case:
“If a man, in lifting a weight or trying to move something not easily moved, were to strain a muscle, or rick his back, or rupture himself, the mishap in ordinary parlance would be described as an accident. Anybody would say that the man had met with an accident in lifting a weight, or trying to move something too heavy for him.”
The Court accordingly held for the claimant, that in suffering the rupture, he had suffered an accident.
We note, in passing, that there thus seems to be much support for the statement in Justice Potter’s dissent in Twork v. Munising Paper Co., 275 Mich 174, 184, almost a quarter-century later, that the decision in the Adams Case “is based upon false premises and disregards the plain language of the statute.”
*197Why have we reviewed in detail these English cases? Certainly they do not control us. Yet we are shortly to examine the 1943 amendments to our act and their full significance can be appreciated only against the background of the pre-1943 situation. It is important to this background to bear in mind that the language of our Michigan act was adopted from the English and Scottish acts on the same subject (Hills v. Blair, 182 Mich 20), and that, generally speaking, under such conditions of adoption it will be presumed that the gloss of decision was recognized by the adopting State and was imported with the act. People, ex rel. Attorney General, v. Welch’s Estate, 235 Mich 555. Our decisions, however, followed the overruled Hensey theory, namely, that a workman who is injured in his employment while doing his ordinary work in the ordinary way has not suffered an accident. We thus assigned a restricted and curtailed meaning to the word “accident,” a meaning at variance with its meaning in ordinary speech. Since such meaning excluded that great body of cases in whieh a man suffered disabling injury at his work through no fault of his own, but without the intervention of any fortuitous or outside force or condition, subtle distinctions grew through the years, as the court sought, as always, to interpret the act in the light of its objectives in the mass of cases pressing upon it. In some, in fact, I find nothing more than an unexpected result of doing one’s ordinary and usual acts in his . usual way. Thus in Watson v. Publix Riviera Theatre, 255 Mich 115, the plaintiff was an actor who.turned somersaults. On one of them “plaintiff’s leg gave way and he fell.” The Court held that his injuries were the result of an accident. As recently as Nichols v. Central Crate & Box Co., 340 Mich 232, 236, we interpreted this case as involving a truly accidental occurrence. It involved, we said (p 237), *198“the sudden giving way of a member and consequent falling.” Yet in the case at bar we have the sudden giving way of the heart and it is held no accident. I cannot reconcile the 2 cases. Does proper distinction lie in the circumstance that in the case before us claimant had (unknown to himself) a pre-existing heart difficulty? ' If so, we are confronted with Hurley v, Selden-Breck Construction Co., 193 Mich 197. There the plaintiff was Arthur Hurley, a brick mason by trade. While lifting a terra cotta window sill into place he suffered a strangulated hernia. It was argued that he had not suffered an accidental injury. But our Court allowed, compensation. It cited (p 199) with approval Bell v. Hayes-Ionia Co., 192 Mich 90, 94, and held that:
“‘structural weakness or actual pain, antedating the injury alleged, in the region where the injury occurred, does not preclude a recovery if the injury itself is distinct and the result of a particular strain causing a sudden protrusion of the .intestine.’ ”
Again I have trouble with reconcilation. The claimant’s heart condition was equally the result of a particular strain. Dr. Ramsdell so testified.
As the cases have multiplied through the years the distinctions have grown more subtle and more numerous and I must confess anguish at any thought of reconcilation on sound differences in legal principle. Fact differentiations, of course, can always be pointed out, but they furnish no guide for tomorrow’s case. The truth of the matter is, we have been attempting the impossible, the differentiation of the accidental means from the accidental result, a differentiation easy to hypothesize but impossible to make in practice. Thus a man is at work. He is straightening a bent piece of material. He does it every day. On this occasion he exerts too much pressure. If the material breaks, we say he broke *199it by accident. If his abdominal wall breaks, we say it is no accident. Or is it? We commence onr laborious search. Is this his ordinary work? Or does his ordinary work involve less stubborn material? How will we define the strength of material which causes him to pass the border enclosing ordinary work? Bid his work involve over-exertion? What is standard exertion for the work?
This factor of the exertion of the claimant has assumed a role of much prominence in our determination of whether or not the workman had suffered an accident. This is probably an inevitable result of our emphasis upon the fortuitous element to the exclusion of the ordinary work done in the ordinary way. The exertion test goes back for many years. We find it before the 200th volume of the Michigan reports and we find it in today’s advance sheets. In Stombaugh v. Peerless Wire Fence Co., 198 Mich 445, a heart-failure case, the industrial accident board found that the workman was “not used to this heavy work and exertion.” This Court, in reversing the award, pointed out that “the wall of one auricle being '[was] so thin that ‘any exertion at all might have been the cause of its breaking.’ ” And in Nichols v. Central Crate & Box Co., 340 Mich 232, 237, we note that the claimant’s work “ ‘required a degree of physical exertion not shown to have been unusual to or greater than that ordinarily experienced in the general field of common labor. Exertion to that extent did not constitute a fortuitous event.’ ”
But the difficulty with making compensation turn upon the difference between ordinary exertion and overexertion is that it forces the commission and this Court into an appraisal of degrees of exertion as between respective claimants, or as between respective jobs. If we apply the exertion test to measure exertion beyond the capacity of the ordinary person, then *200the workman who is, unfortunately, substandard in strength can never recover, while his muscularly well-endowed brother will always receive compensation. I cannot accept this result. I cannot believe that it was the legislative intent to protect only the strong, letting the weak lie where they fall.
The act contemplates no such appraisal of degrees of exertion. It takes the workman as it finds him. What is overexertion for one is underexertion for another. What is stress and strain for one is relative peace and quiet for a third. Humans differ in all of these characteristics.
The exertion test leads to equally untenable results if we apply the test to measure the exertion usually required by the employee’s job. In such event, if we have a job that is so voracious in its demands upon the human system that no one, not even the strongest, can do the work and keep his health, then no one will ever recover compensation for it. I cannot conclude, either, that it was the legislative intent to give such work immunity, so far as compensation is concerned. Combinations of the above tests may be employed, but aside from the confusion and complications resulting there is a decisive and compelling circumstance militating against the use of any measure of exertion as a test for compensability: The legislature has set up no standard whatever for guidance. A factor so crucial could not have been left undefined,- had it been the legislative intent that it control.
The question we have been forced to answer, then, upon our interpretation of the meaning of the aet, is this: Is the injury the unexpected result of ordinary work or is it the ordinary result of unexpected work? This question is nothing more or less than a verbal puzzle. As long as compensation is made to turn on it we will have constant litigation and distinc*201tions will multiply beyond all hope of reconciliation. Mr. Justice Cardozo’s concern in bis dissent in Landress v. Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Co., 291 US 491, 499 (54 S Ct 461, 78 L ed 934, 90 ALR 1382), comes forcibly to mind:
“The- attempted distinction between accidental results and accidental means will plunge this branch of the law into a Serbonian bog.”
Thus we draw close to the 1943 amendment. By the year 1941 there was much publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the act. Two governors, one now a distinguished member of this Court, had recommended revision. The law, it was said, was “inadequate today for our present industrial economy.” Amendments were recommended “to bring about comprehensive liberalization of its provisions.” (Anderson v. General Motors Corporation, 313 Mich 630.) A study commission was set up accordingly.  Its report is found in 1943 House Journal, page 318, et seq. The matter of personal injuries received much attention. The committee’s report (not unanimous) read in part as follows (p 320):
“Part II
Definition of Injuries; and Computation of Benefits
“One change in this part of the proposed act abolishes the schedule of 31 occupational diseases contained in the 1937 amendment to the present law and also abolishes the requirement that injuries be accidental.”
Other members of the study commission were not, however, like minded. Their views respecting the matter of the requirement of an “accident” and their *202statutory recommendation with respect thereto follow verbatim (p 337):
“But we do insist that there should not he deleted from the present law, as the other 2 voting members propose, the fact that all other personal injuries must be accidental. Otherwise it is evident to any reasonable minded person that grave injustice will be worked against an employer and force up insurance rates.”
It was proposed by them that section 1 of part 2 he amended to read as follows (p 337):
i “Sec. 1. If an employee receives an accidental personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment by an employer who is at the time of such injury subject to the provisions of this act, he shall be paid compensation benefits in the manner and to the extent hereinafter provided, or, in case of his death resulting from such injury, compensation benefits shall he paid to his dependents as hereinafter defined.”
It is fair to say, then, that the legislature had clearly before it at this time the question of whether or not the requirement of accident in the act, as interpreted by the Court, should be retained. Its decision is found in the act as amended and passed, reading, in part, as follows:
“Sec. 1. An employee, who receives a personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment by an employer who is at the time of such injury subject to the provisions of this act, shall he paid. compensation in the manner and to the extent hereinafter provided, or in case of his death resulting from such injuries such compensation shall be paid' to his dependents as hereinafter defined. The term ‘time of injury’ or ‘date of injury’ as used in this act shall in the case of a disease or in the case of an injury not attributable to a single event he the last day of work in the employment in which *203the employee was last subjected to the conditions resulting in disability or death.” (CL 1948, § 412.1, ! [Stat Ann 1950 Rev § 17.151].) '
It will be observed that the insertion of the suggested word “accidental” has been rejected. It should also be noted that the same amendment undertook a wholesale excision of the words “accident” and “accidental injury,” from other portions of the act, and the substitution of the word “injury.” Anderson v. General Motors Corporation, supra. Our words in People v. Adamowski, 340 Mich 422, 429, would seem particularly applicable at this point:
“When the legislature affirmatively rejected the statutory language which would have supported the State’s present view, it thereby made its intention crystal clear. We should not, without a clear and cogent reason to the contrary, give- a statute a construction which the legislature itself plainly refused to give.”
Legislative action of even greater significance was,' however, embodied in the same amendment. The legislature, it will be noted, has now authorized compensation for personal injury due to disease, for per-1 sonal injury not attributable to a single event, and for personal injuries attributable to a single event. Why the employment of this word “event” in speaking of injuries? It will be recalled that the word “accident,” in its common usage, and as interpreted by the highest English court in the Fenton Case, involved both the idea of cause and the idea of effect. One might suffer an accident, not in doing his ordinary work in the ordinary way, but by some wholly unexpected or fortuitous'condition or incident. Such was the “cause” aspect.. Or he might suffer an accident as the unexpected result of some ordinary task, such as the rupture case. This is the “effect” aspect. As we have seen, however, our *204Court interpreted the word “accident” to embody only the cause aspect, excluding the unexpected result of ordinary work. The word “event,” however, is properly subject to no such ellipsis. It is clearly and indisputably a word referring to both cause and result. It is a word synonymous with occurrence and includes all of the steps or incidents from first cause to final effect. Should authority be demanded, beyond the authority of common speech, Webster’s New International Dictionary (2d ed) will illumine the point. The result, then, is that the word “accident,” even where applicable in the act and its title, has now been restored to its original meaning. It refers to both cause and effect. It includes not only the unexpected incident or condition but also the unexpected result of ordinary work. Thus we have come full circle and have reached by remedial legislation the same result as the English courts by interpretation.
It is my opinion, then, that the word “accident” as employed in the act comprehends the unexpected result, as well as the unexpected cause, that we should now so hold, and that we should overrule those cases inconsistent, therewith. Let it not be thought that such action would unsettle the law of our jurisdiction. Our Court has divided repeatedly on this matter, and such divisions have contributed little to clarity or certainty in a branch of the law which, above many others, should be as certain, as clear, and as nonlitigious as possible.
The State of Florida has undergone similar travail on this very question. It would not be fruitful to point out in detail how the Florida law became confused and unsettled. The supreme court’s recent action, in Gray v. Employers Mutual Liability Ins. Co. (Florida), 64 So2d 650, 651, is self-explanatory :
*205“It is enough, then, if there is an unexpected result, even though there was no unexpected cause, such as a slip, fall or misstep, in order to constitute an ‘accident’ within the meaning of the workmen’s compensation law; and insofar as the McNeill and Peterson Cases, supra,  hold that an injury is not compensable if it happens while the claimant is performing his ordinary work in the usual manner, these decisions are hereby modified, and we re-affirm the rule laid down in Duff Hotel Co. v. Ficara, 150 Fla 442 (7 So2d 790), that an unexpected injury received in the ordinary performance of a duty in the usual manner is an injury ‘by accident’ within the purview of the workmen’s compensation law, without the showing of anything fortuitous.”
Upon the above analysis, Wieda is entitled to compensation. The disability arose out of and in the course of employment, and, as the commission properly found, there was a direct causal relation between the power failure and his heart failure.
But even should my view as to the proper interpretation of the word “accident” be rejected, Wieda is still entitled to compensation under the facts of this particular case, because certain distinctions, urged upon us by the plaintiff, must be made.
The defendant, American Box Board Company, insists that there was no “accident.” It argues, citing Nichols v. Central Crate & Box Company, supra, that, “this Court has consistently maintained that it is not sufficient that the results be unexpected— the means must be involuntary or unintended.” It then points out that the remedial steps to be undertaken in event of power failure had often been rehearsed, hence, it argues that it could not be said that the incident was unexpected, though, of course, the results (the physical injuries and death) were. *206As it says: - “One does not train for, drill and rehearse an ‘accident.’” It relies upon the case of McGregor v. Conservation Department, 338 Mich 93, 101, in which compensation was denied a fire warden, the Court stating:
“In the instant case, plaintiff, at most, was doing .the hard labor customarily performed by him and ■fellow employees during at least 2 months of each ■year which required a degree of physical exertion not shown to have been unusual to or greater than ■that ordinarily experienced in the general field of ■ common labor. Exertion to that extent did not 'constitute • a fortuitous event.”
It should be observed, in connection with the McGregor Case, that the compensation commission relied upon this case in denying Wieda compensation, its holding in this' connection being as follows:
“There can be.no doubt from an examination of the medical testimony that there was a causal relationship between the power failure and the coronary occlusion through aggravation of an unknown preexisting arteriosclerotic condition in his heart. The • disability arose out of and in the course of the employment. However, we can see no valid distinction between this case and the case of McGregor v. Conservation Department, 338 Mich 93, decided by our. Supreme Court on November- 27, 1953. . The award of the deputy commissioner is reversed and the plaintiff is not entitled to compensation.”
The plaintiff-appellant, on the other hand, insists that the power failure was an unexpected and fortuitous event, in the sense heretofore employed by "this Court, and that its remedy involved more than ordinary exertion.. In partial reply to the McGregor Case, supra, he points to a night watchman case (Schroetke v, Jackson-Church Co., 193 Mich 616 [LRA1917D, 64]), in which the premises caught *207on fire, the night watchman’s previously-affected heart gave out due to his fire-fighting efforts, and this Court reversed an order denying compensation, stating (pp 621, 625),:
“We think this case fairly presents the question whether compensation can be recovered where death or disability results from overexertion and excitement caused by an accidental fire such as broke out in this case, where the deceased was afflicted with heart ailment, and where death was due to heart failure caused by deceased’s condition of the heart and the excitement and exertion incident to the fire. % * *
“In the instant case the whole circumstance, including the fire, the overexertion and the excitement of the deceased, may be said to have been an accident. It was certainly a fortuitous circumstance.”
If I were called upon to base this decision upon whether or not there was an “accident,” in the sense of an extraneous, fortuitous occurrence as distinguished from ordinary work, I would feel no hesitation in saying that there was. The emergency confronting the plaintiff was serious in the extreme. The plant was threatened with the “disintegration,” according to the record, of a revolving turbine. The fact that careful foresight makes plans for rapid and efficient remedial measures in case of an accident makes the accident nonetheless á threatening emergency when and if it occurs. The danger of the turbine’s distintegration, the plaintiff’s repeated and hasty trips up and down the stairs as various measures of relief (yes, measures long planned for such a catastrophe) were employed, the sense of pressure and peril so well described in the record, all constituted and contributed to unusual exertions in coping with an out-of-the-ordinary and fortuitous event. The “rehearsal” aspect is completely imma*208terial. There is constant rehearsal of fires in our school buildings, and of “man overboard” at sea, as well as of power failures in industrial power plants. Let those who will deny that, when the fire actually occurs, or the seaman falls overboard, the dreaded emergency does not involve the most intense pressures and exertions, far beyond normal routine, eveiT the routine of drills. Our mind goes back to the morning of Pearl Harbor. Our ■ understanding is that Admiral Bellinger, at 0758 that fateful morning, from his headquarters on Ford Island, broadcast the news of the Japanese attack simultaneously with the dropping of the first bomb. His words were “Air Raid, Pearl Harbor.” Then, knowing something of the human reaction we must take into account in the case now before us, he added the pregnant words: “This is no drill.” It was the real thing. There is a vast difference.
But I do not place my decision on this ground, valid though I believe it to be. I place it on the ground that the word “accident” includes both the unexpected cause and the unexpected result, that the claimant suffered an accident, an injury from a single event or series thereof which arose out of and in the course of his employment.
The commission’s denial of award should be reversed and the award of the deputy commissioner should be affirmed, with costs to appellant.

 (1887) 12 AC 518 (57 LJ QB 24, 57 LT 726).

 This is the wilful misconduct exclusion; Michigan counterpart, section 2 of part 2 of original act (PA 1912 [1st Ex Sess], No 10, now CL 1948, §412.2 [Stat Ann 1950 Rev §17.152]).