Court Opinion

ID: 9717945
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:13:20.161762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:56.209556
License: Public Domain

Grant, J.,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent from the conclusion reached by the majority. As stated in the majority opinion, in reviewing a case from the Workers’ Compensation Court, we must give the findings of fact made by that court the same effect as a jury verdict in a civil case, and such findings will not be set aside unless they are clearly wrong. Kuticka v. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 227 Neb. 565, 418 N.W.2d 593 (1988). The panel found that plaintiff’s disability was caused by an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment.
Plaintiff did a variety of jobs. In the job which required operating the squeezer, plaintiff would go through the operation requiring activating the knee paddles on 250 or 260 *386smaller jobs per day, or 130 to 175 daily operations on larger jobs. In the course of each operation, plaintiff would activate the right paddle three times and the left paddle twice on the average. The trauma resulting from this continual knee action first resulted in the doctor’s advising plaintiff to wear kneepads to strike the paddles. Surgery eventually followed.
Plaintiff’s treating doctor testified that “the causes were the folds in the lining of the [knee] joint and the tightness of the support tissues to the outside of the kneecap.” The doctor further testified:
I think his symptoms were sort of the accumulative affect [sic] of his work activities. He did have some minor injuries, but I can’t say that I can look back historically at any one of them as the initiating event.
Basically, I have to go on what Mr. Gilbert told me. From what I could assess, this was sort of an accumulative affect [sic] of work and use of his legs in his work activities.
Q Among the activities that he had described, the twisting, the squatting and the pushing the pads and whatever the other ones were, is it your opinion that each of them or any particular one of them were the contributing causés?
A I don’t know that I could specify any one of them.
While the doctor could not testify exactly what work activity was a contributing cause of the injury, the fact remains that the doctor testified plaintiff’s symptoms were “sort of an accumulative affect [sic] of work and use of his legs in his work activities.”
The record also shows that, on cross-examination, plaintiff’s doctor responded to the question, “[C]an a person become symtomatic [sic] by doing the things that a human being does in ordinary life, driving an automobile, walking, standing, sitting, squatting?” by testifying, “Yes, they can.” It is also clear that defendant’s doctor testified generally that no one could pinpoint the cause of plaintiff’s injury between ordinary activities and work activities. Nonetheless, although the cross-examination of plaintiff’s doctor attacked the doctor’s credibility, and although defendant’s doctor contradicted *387plaintiff’s doctor, I believe the credibility of plaintiff’s doctor was for the panel and that there was sufficient evidence before the panel to sustain the determination of the panel that plaintiff’s disability was caused by his work activities. I would not set aside the award of the panel as being clearly wrong.
White and Shanahan, J J., join in this dissent.