Court Opinion

ID: 9626806
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:24:28.246399+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:20.983658
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Associate Chief Justice
(dissenting):
I dissent. In one of the first important tests of the rules laid down in Allen v. Industrial Commission, 729 P.2d 15 (Utah 1986), the majority reverses and remands to “resubmit the question of medical causa-tions to the panel.” But the medical panel has already addressed that exact question, and the administrative law judge found that the decedent’s death was caused by his job-related activities on the day that the fatal accident occurred. What more the court expects than has been done by the Commission is not explained by the majority. The administrative law judge was correct in his ruling, the Commission so found, and I agree.
It is precisely this kind of case that demonstrates that our newly formulated methods of analysis will inevitably draw the Commission off into pathways that are bound, I believe, to lead to error. The Court’s unfortunate requirement that, since Mabbutt had a preexisting condition, the Commission must find “that his employment activities involved exertion or stress in excess of the normally expected level of activity for men and women in the latter of the twentieth century,” is precisely the discriminatory application of workers' compensation laws to workers with a preexisting condition, which I referred to in my dissent in Allen.
I would affirm on the authority of Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory v. Keller, 657 P.2d 1367 (Utah 1983), and Kaiser Steel Corp. v. Monfredi, 631 P.2d 888 (Utah *10851981). Like Pittsburgh Testing and Monfredi, the decedent’s preexisting coronary condition was clearly aggravated in this case. The administrative law judge made that clear in his findings:
[T]here is no way of knowing exactly how long before the hour of 4:20 p.m. the applicant first felt the effects of that stress or at what time he actually died but it could have been some hours before 4:20 p.m. We are not called upon to speculate as to those times or as to the excessive stress or exertion later in the afternoon in view of the fact that two fine cardiologists have agreed that the evidence is sufficient to convince them that the death was industrially related.
The Administrative Law Judge finds that Mr. Mabbutt died as the result of an accident in the course of his employment on October 23, 1981 resulting from unusual exertion and stress connected with his employment on that fateful afternoon.
I would affirm. The Commission has found the necessary facts, and it is not for us to ignore them.
HALL, C.J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of STEWART, Associate C.J.