Court Opinion

ID: 9628624
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:27:11.708254+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:08.841940
License: Public Domain

Foster, J.
(dissenting) — The court decides that a new trial must be granted because the report of a special medical examiner chosen by the department was admitted in evidence when it was offered by the widow of the deceased workman. To this conclusion I must dissent.
On April 10, 1955, respondent’s husband filed a report of an industrial accident occurring on March 2, 1955. Approximately four months after the accident, the department selected two physicians to examine the injured workman and to report whether the accident caused the disability or not. While making a joint report, the two physicians disagreed as to the relationship of the injury and the disability. The eminent heart specialist, Dr. John F. Steele of Tacoma, advised the department in writing that he considered the injury to be the proximate cause of the disability. The workman’s claim was rejected because the department held his condition was not the result of his injury. The claimant promptly appealed, but at the time of his death, eighteen months after the injury, the appeal board had not decided his case.
A subsequent appeal was taken by his widow from the order denying her claim for a pension.
At the trial, the widow of the deceased workman offered in evidence the report of the department’s medical examiner, which report the court admitted. This court now reverses on that ground.
From the beginning the legislature directed that judicial review of decisions in industrial insurance cases should be *146informal and summary. Laws of 1911, chapter 74 § 20, p. 368, provides, in part:
“ . . . The proceedings in every such appeal shall be informal and summary, but full opportunity to be heard shall be had before judgment is pronounced. ...”
That language is presently codified as RCW 51.52.115.
Notwithstanding this mandate, this court now injects all of the technicalities of the common-law rules of evidence, which is reminiscent of the admonition of the late Judge Bausman writing this court’s opinion in Stertz v. Industrial Ins. Comm., 91 Wash. 588, 158 Pac. 256, in which we said:
“By the working class the new legislation was craved from a horror of lawyers and judicial trials. . . . ”2
The department’s authority to order a workman to submit to a physical examination is found in RCW 51.32.110, which, so far as material, is as follows:
“Any workman entitled to receive compensation under this title shall, if requested by the department, submit himself for medical examination, at a time and from time to time, at a place reasonably convenient for the workman and as may be provided by the rules of the department. If the workman refuses to submit to any such examination, or obstructs the same, his rights to monthly payments shall be suspended until such examination has taken place and no compensation shall be payable during or for such period ...”
The workman submitted because the statute compelled him to do so, and now the court reverses a judgment for *147his surviving widow because the report of such examination was admitted in evidence when offered by his widow.
Dr. Steele’s report to the department was not hearsay, so there is no occasion to consider the exception to the hearsay rule contained in the uniform business records as evidence act. It was made directly to the department by Dr. Steele who had been employed by the department for that specific purpose. It is not necessary, nor is it proper, to have recourse to the uniform business records as evidence act, RCW chapter 5.45, or to decisions construing that act.3
The physician’s opinion appearing in the hospital chart in Young v. Liddington, 50 Wn. (2d) 78, 309 P. (2d) 761, was held incompetent because it was not sufficiently probative to be admissible. Such was the sole reason for exclusion. It was not held that records containing opinions must be excluded. Had that been the decision, I would not have signed it. The question here was completely absent in Young v. Liddington, supra, which the court cites as support for its position.
It must be remembered that this state adopted an industrial insurance system rather than a workman’s compensation or employer’s liability system. Even now, only seven states have a compulsory state monopoly system of industrial insurance. In 1911, Washington was the first state to do so, modeling our statute after the German system. Stertz v. Industrial Ins. Comm., supra. A major reason for the choice of industrial insurance rather than the private profit insurance was that the legislature felt that a compulsory state monopoly system would avoid many of the abuses to which a competitive system of com*148pensation might lead. That philosophy is exemplified in the legislative admonition that appeals are to be informal with an emphasis on substance rather than technicalities.
On court review, it is necessary and proper that the-jury should know all of the information upon which the-department acted. All of the material should be presented so that the jury can properly evaluate the action taken by the department. This principle of full disclosure permeates-, the entire industrial insurance procedure.
In Murray v. Department of Labor & Industries, 151 Wash. 95, 275 Pac. 66, the first case in this state to deal with industrial insurance appeals under the forerunner of the-present scheme, we so stated:
“When the joint board acts upon a claim, it takes into-consideration all of the evidence which has been submitted by the claimant. It may also take into consideration the-opinion of its chief medical adviser and other officers, and. their opinions may not appear in the record. For illustration, assume that the claimant introduces testimony tending to show that he was suffering from diabetes caused by dropping a piece of timber upon his foot. The joint board summarily rejects the claim on the oral advice of its medical officer, and an appeal is taken to the superior-court. There the claimant produces the record of the department and the full record of all proceedings and testimony taken before the joint board. ...”
It is the responsibility of the department, in such proceedings, to see that all the material is presented. The-court’s opinion, however, misconceives the nature of appeal from a departmental ruling in industrial insurance-cases. This is not a strictly adversary proceeding; the-common-law rules of evidence do not strictly obtain. The-department’s responsibility to assure presentation of all. material cannot be avoided by use of legalistic rules which the framers of the statute sought to avoid.
In this situation, not only was the evidence properly-admitted but, when the events at trial are viewed in their proper light, the' further conclusion follows that the • widow was entitled to an instruction on the failure of the department to call the physician or to offer his report. For-*149reasons not disclosed, the department did not offer Dr. Steele’s report nor call him as a witness. Under such circumstances, the widow was entitled to an instruction that the reason the department did not call the physician, whom it employed to examine the workman and to advise it respecting the crucial issue, was because his testimony, if produced, would have been unfavorable to the department.
The controlling rule of law is stated in McCormick on Evidence, 533, § 249:
“When it would be natural under the circumstances for a party to call a particular witness, or to take the stand himself as a witness, or voluntarily to produce documents or other objects in his possession as evidence, and he fails to do so, his adversary may use this failure as the basis for invoking an adverse inference. ...”
That rule of law is applicable; but more than that, the recognition that this is not strictly an adversary proceeding is imperative. The department had the responsibility to disclose all of the material, whether favorable or unfavorable to its position. The department did not make full disclosure. Surely the claimant may properly assert rights to which she is entitled, and which the department has failed to recognize.
Since Dr. Steele was employed by the department for the purpose of examining the workman and advising it as to the relationship of cause and effect between the injury and his then disability, it would have been error to exclude such testimony. The correct rule of law is stated in Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Moss (Tex. Civ. App.), 109 S. W. (2d) 1035:
“The statement of a physician acting within the scope of his authority as medical examiner for the company relative to the physical fitness of an applicant for insurance is admissible in evidence. Clarkston v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 190 Mo. App. 624, 176 S. W. 437; Rhode v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 129 Mich. 112, 88 N. W. 400; Id., 132 Mich. 503, 93 N. W. 1076; Perry v. John Hancock Mutual Life Ins. Co., 143 Mich. 290, 106 N. W. 860; Holloman v. Life Ins. Co., 12 Fed. Cas. 383, No. 6623; Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co. v. Cannon, 48 Ind. 264.”
*150Professor McCormick, as a result of his research, stated the rule as follows:
“Accordingly, well-reasoned modern decisions have admitted in accident- cases the written reports of doctors of their findings from an examination of the injured party, when it appears that it is the doctor’s professional routine or duty to make such report. ...” McCormick on Evidence, 603, 604, § 287.
Nor can I agree that rules of the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals can be resorted to unless proved the same as other facts must be proved.
In Larson v. Department of Labor & Industries, 174 Wash. 618, 25 P. (2d) 1040, this court held:
“Appellant relies, first, on rule XIII of the general rules of the superior court [1 Rem. Rev. Stat., p. 162]. The rule, as set out in appellant’s brief, reads as follows:
“ ‘Unless an emergency is shown to exist, the court will not sign findings of fact and conclusions of law until the defeated party or parties have had three days’ notice of the time and place of the submission thereof, and shall have been served with copies of the proposed findings and conclusions.’
“The rule is not made a part of the statement of facts, is not contained in the record, and comes before us only by recital in appellant’s brief. An appellate court will not take cognizance of the rules of the court below when they are not in the record, in the absence of a statute requiring it to do so. 15 R. C. L. p. 1079, § 17; Nichols’ Applied Evidence, Vol. 4, p. 4086; Bancroft Code Practice and Remedies, Vol. 1, § 665, p. 982; Bowen v. Webb, 34 Mont. 61, 85 Pac. 739; Middle States Oil Corp. v. Tanner-Jones Drilling Co., 73 Mont. 180, 235 Pac. 770; Stivers v. Byrkett, 56 Ore. 565, 108 Pac. 1014, 109 Pac. 386; Peters v. Walker, 37 Idaho 195, 215 Pac. 845; Gammon v. Ealey & Thompson, 97 Cal. App. 452, 275 Pac. 1005. We have no statute in this state requiring this court to take judicial notice of the rules of the superior courts. We can not, therefore, take judicial notice of the rule.”
The sole issue is the admissibility in evidence of the report of the medical examiner employed by the appellant, and no question arises as to whether the appellant is bound by such report. The fact that it was admitted for one rea*151son does not preclude this court from considering other reasons for determining admissibility whether such reasons were considered by the trial court or not. The issue is the admissibility of the report, not the reason assigned by the trial court or by counsel offering it. Kirkpatrick v. Deparment of Labor & Industries, 48 Wn. (2d) 51, 290 P. (2d) 979; Bruce v. Bruce, 48 Wn. (2d) 635, 296 P. (2d) 310; Radach v. Prior, 48 Wn. (2d) 901, 297 P. (2d) 605.
I would affirm the judgment.
Rosellini, J. concurs with Foster, J.

“It was not surprising therefore that the Workmen’s Compensation Acts at once became the target for volleys of legal argument, or that miners who were injured by the shot-firing operations carried on in coal mines were held by the House of Lords not to be entitled to any compensation after all. Nor was the argument limited to ‘the course of employment’; almost every phrase used in the Acts was scrutinised over and over again by the courts and a massive series of law reports devoted solely to the subject of workmen’s compensation was built up over the years to the enrichment of the publishers and the edification of the profession. In numerous instances Parliament intervened in order to contradict the construction which the lawyers had fastened upon the Acts, but in 1946 Parliament lost patience altogether and decided that the only way to make the Acts work at all was to forbid lawyers to have any thing to do with them.” Harvey, The Advocate’s Devil, chapter 5, p. 75, 88.

Travis Life Ins. Co. v. Rodriguez (Tex. Civ. App.), 326 S. W. (2d) 256; 38 Tex. L. Rev. 645, Evidence, Admission in Evidence, Records, Hospitals, Diagnosis of Leukemia in Hospital Record Held Admissible Under Texas Business Records Act; 5 Vanderbilt L. Rev. 651, Evidence, Entries in the Regular Course of Business, Test for Extent of Admissibility Under Federal Judicial Code; 37 Cornell L. Q. 290, Evidence, Entries in the Regular Course of Business, Physicians’ Letters Describing Patient’s Condition; 14 Southwestern L. Jour. 115, Evidence, Hearsay Rule, Admissibility of Hospital Records.