Court Opinion

ID: 9884190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:46:22.621716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:04.296198
License: Public Domain

Hetdgr, J.
(dissenting). It is conceded that the workman sustained a traumatic sacroiliac sprain arising out of and in the course of his employment. The contention is that this did not constitute an injury by accident within the intendment of section 7 of the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1911 (B. S. 34:15-7), providing compensation for a workman’s personal injuries or death suffered “by accident arising out of and in the course of” his employment. The specific *595insistence is that “when * * * an injury has been caused by physical exertion alone, New Jersey law now requires, and, save for a very few cases decided during a brief interval of time, always has required as the minimal ‘accident’ the existence of an unusual exertion or unusual strain.” The rationale of the opinion of my brethren of the majority is that to bring a given case within the statute, “there must be an accident, that the accident must be an event beyond the mere employment and that the injury is the result of the accident and is not itself the accident,” and it is incumbent on the claimant to prove “an unusual strain or an unusual exertion or some condition unusual in the employment in order to show an accident” within the purview of the statute. I dissent from this judgment as an undue constriction of a measure designed to render compensation for the consequences of disabling and fatal industrial accidents and to place the burden upon industry, and therefore a remedial provision grounded in social and economic considerations that on well settled principles is to be liberally and broadly construed to effectuate the beneficent object in view. Vide Sigley v. Marathon Razor Blade Co., Inc., 111 N. J. L. 25 (E. & A. 1933).
This is to reiterate the view voiced in my concurrences in the judgments pronounced in Lohndorf v. Peper Bros. Paint Co., 135 N. J. L. 352 (E. & A. 1947) and Temple v. Storch Trucking Co., 3 N. J. 42 (1949) that this doctrine has introduced into judicial administration an arbitrary classification that is not to be found in the statute. An event or happening “beyond” the employment would hardly be an incident of the service. Certainly, an accident does not arise out of the employment in statutory intendment unless the risk is reasonably incident to the employment. The legislative design plainly was to make provision for the hazard of accident within the range of the servant’s work. A compensable risk may be either an ordinary one, directly connected with the employment, or one extraordinary in character, indirectly connected with the employment because of its special nature; but unless the hazard be either the one or the *596other, the accident is not attributable to the employment. In either event, the happening is imputable to the employment as one within the service and not beyond it, and therefore compensable. The critical inquiry is whether the danger is one to which the employee was exposed because of the nature of his employment: if it is, the accident is within the statutory class; otherwise not. Geltman v. Reliable Linen & Supply Co., 128 N. J. L. 443 (E. & A. 1943).
In seeking for the legislative intent, we should take care not to enter the realm of the abstruse and the metaphysical. The lawgivers have used the word “accident” in its popular and ordinary sense. The term has a wide signification. Its long accepted definition in Few Jersey, as elsewhere, is “an unlooked-for mishap or untoward event which is not expected or designed.” Bryant, adm'x., v. Fissell, 84 N. J. L. 72 (Sup. Ct. 1913). The English Compensation Act of 1906 (6 Edw. VII, 1906, c. 58, sec. 1 (1)) is the prototype of ours: and, barring a definite contextual expression contra, the interpretation given this common basic provision by the courts of England before the adoption of the measure in Few Jersey may well be considered as determinative of the legislative purpose. It is a fair presumption that the Legislature, in thus adopting the very language of the foreign statute, had in mind the construction given in that jurisdiction to the words so employed, and to have used them in that sense. Hall v. Doremus, 114 N. J. L. 47, 53 (Sup. Ct. 1934); Geltman v. Reliable Linen & Supply Co., cited supra.
The definition of the word “accident” accepted in the cited ease of Bryant, adm'x., v. Fissell, is Lord Macnaghten’s in Fenton v. Thorley & Co., Ltd. (1903), A. C. 443, construing a like provision of the earlier English act of 1897. 60, 61 Viet. (1897), c. 37, sec. 1 (1). There, it was held that a rupture incurred in the doing of a normal act of the employment constituted an injury-by accident within the meaning of the statute. And in Clover, Clayton & Co., Ltd., v. Hughes (1910), A. C. 242, 79 L. J. K. B. 470, a fatal rupture of an advanced aneurism of the aorta, caused by strain when the *597workman was tightening a nut with a spanner, was held by the House of Lords to be an “accident” within the sense of the statute, even though the aneurism was in such an advanced condition that “it might have burst while the man was asleep, and very slight exertion, or strain, would have been sufficient to bring about a rupture.” The finding of the county court judge was that “the death was caused by a strain arising out of the ordinary work of the deceased operating upon a condition of body which was such as to render the strain fatal.” Lord Loreburn said that the rupture was certainly an “accident” in the statutory' sense, for it was an “untoward event” that .was not expected or designed, and that, while the fatal strain was “quite ordinary in this quite ordinary work,” it was nevertheless a compensable accident, for there was the requisite “relation of cause and effect between the employment and the accident, as well as between the accident and the injury.” He declared that there is the essential causal connection if “it appears that the employment is one of the contributing causes without which the accident which actually happened would not have happened, and if the accident is one of the contributing causes without which the injury which actually followed would not have followed.” An accident, he continued, may be “something going wrong within the human frame itself, such as the straining of a muscle or the breaking of a blood vessel,” He deemed it of no importance that “there was no strain or exertion out of the ordinary.” An accident, he said, “arises out of the employment when the required exertion producing the accident is too great for the man undertaking the work, whatever the degree of exertion or the condition of health.” He found the test to be whether the work, “as a matter of substance, contributed to the accident.” The inquiry is: Did the- workman “die from the disease alone or from the disease and employment taken together, looking at it broadly? Looking at it broadly, I say, and free from over-nice conjectures, was it the disease that did it, or did the work he was doing help in any material degree ?” Lord Macnaghten, concurring said: *598“The fact that the man’s condition predisposed him to such an accident seems to be immaterial. The work was ordinary work, but it was too heavy for him.”
The principle was again applied by the House of Lords in Partridge Jones and John Paton, Ltd., v. James (1933), A. C. 501, where there was a fatal attack of angina pectoris; also by the Court of Appeal in McArdle v. Swansen Harbour Trust, 113 L. T. 677; 8 B. W. C. C. 489 (1915), another case of a ruptured aneurism by reason of a strain at ordinary work; and in Stewart v. Wilsons and Clyde Coal Co., Ltd., 5 Frazer 120 (1900), where Lord M’Laren laid down the criterion as follows: “If a workman in the reasonable performance of his duties sustains a physiological injury as the result of the work he is engaged in * * * this is accidental injury in the sense of the statute.”
And in Trim Joint District School v. Kelly (1914), A. C. 667, where an assistant master of a training school for children suffered a fatal skull fracture at the hands of boys under his care who had entered into a conspiracy to assault him in retaliation for unwelcome discipline, the House of Lords held that the occurrence was an accident within the meaning of the statute. Viscount Haldane, L. C., read the word “designed” in Lord Macnaghten’s definition as referring to “designed by the sufferer.” He continued: “If the object of this statute be as wide as I gather from the study of its language, its construction must, as it appears to me, be that accident includes any injury which is not expected or designed by the workman himself. * * * To take a different view appears to me to amount, in the language of Mathew, L. J., in Challis v. L. and S. W. R. Co. (1905), 2 K. B. 154; 7 W. C. C. 23, to the reading into the act of a proviso that an accident is not to be deemed within it if it arises from the mischievous act of a person not in the service of the employer.” If, he said, the workman is the victim of “unexpected misfortune,” the consequent injury is compensable, subject to the all-important limitation that the “risk should have arisen out of and in the course of the employment.” Lord Loreburn, *599concurring in the judgment, affirmed that the term “accident” is to be construed “in the popular sense, as plain people would understand it,” but also “in its setting, in the context, and in the light of the purpose which appears from the act itself.” After pointing to the variety of meanings in ordinary usage, he declared: “In short, the common meaning of this word is ruled neither by logic nor by etymology, but by custom, and no formula will precisely express its usage for all cases.” Rejecting the theory that the employee there “could not have been killed by accident because he was struck by design,” he said that “if you looked at the nature of the man’s employment; you might say he was injured by what was accident in that employment. * * *. I find that to treat the word ‘accident’ as though the act meant to contrast it with design would exclude from what I am sure was an intended benefit, numbers of cases which are to my mind obviously within the mischief. That makes me realize the value of the old rule about construing a remedial statute.”
The injury here was, I submit, within the mischief to which the remedy was directed. The legislative purpose was to provide for the hazard of accident within the scope of the employee’s work. The question is whether there was an accident, in the sense of an unlooked-for mishap or untoward event not expected or designed, imputable to a risk reasonably incident to the doing of the master’s work. The words “out of” import an accident that is in some sense due to the employment—an accident resulting from a risk attending the employment. Chief Judge Loughran, for the New York Court of Appeals, lately said: “Whether a particular event was an industrial accident is to be determined, not by any legal definition, but by the common-sense viewpoint of the average man.” Masse v. James H. Robinson Co., 301 N. Y. 34, 92 N. E. 2d 56 (Ct. of App. 1950). How would the lay mind describe the occurrence here, if not as an accident, i. e., a sprain of the sacroiliac joint as the result of exertion in the doing of laborious work? Would the person so afflicted consider himself the victim of disease or an acci*600dent? How would the medical fraternity characterize it except as an accident? There was here an injury traumatic rather than specific^in nature, followed immediately by the pain and disability which usually attend such traumata. The. indirect application of force produced internal pressure and consequent injury to the sacroiliac ligaments. Compare Furferi v. Pennsylvania R. R. Co., 117 N. J. L. 508 (E. & A. 1937). A sprain is (1) a sudden or violent overstrain or wrenching, as of the ligaments of a joint; (2) the condition caused by such overstrain, usually including swelling and inflammation. Webster’s New International Dictionary (2d ed.).
As pointed out by Lord Loreburn in the cited case of Clover, Clayton & Co., Ltd., v. Hughes, a distinction between “usual” and “unusual” strains and exertions in classifying compensable and noncompensable hazards of employment would be illusory, for it necessarily presupposes a standard of exertion varying in every trade and occupation. It is an impracticable rule plainly at odds with the statutory concept of an accident bearing a causal relation to the employment. Repeating the query put in the cited case of Temple v. Storch Trucking Co., Does the rule have reference to an occurrence that is not incidental to the employment, and therefore beyond it? Or does it relate to strain or exertion that is incidental to the employment, but not usual in the doing of the work ? If so, how would the degree of exertion be measured ? And why should there be a distinction between usual and unusual strains if they are alike incidental to the employment? Is it not in either case a happening arising out of the- employment? If the statutory category includes disabling injury resulting from the direct application of force in the performance of an ordinary service incident to the employment, such, for example, as the loss of a member, on what principle do we exclude an injury ensuing from the pressure of intervening indirect force? In either case, there is an injury traumatic in origin. What difference can there *601be in this regard between ordinary and extraordinary strain ? Great exertion may on occasion be required in the performance of duty incident to the employment—e. g., in the discharge of fire and police duties. And yet the happening is not beyond the service, but rather the result of effort in the normal pursuit of the employment, not unusual or extraordinary when the standard and demands of duty -are considered. A rule that differentiates in this regard the usual from the unusual strain is an artificial and unworkable deviation from the interpretation accorded this basic provision of the statute from its early days—an interpretation in keeping with that given the same clause of its English prototype.
Injury to the internal bodily structure as the result of exertion in the performance of the master’s work, or by the conditions of the employment, without any external happening of an accidental nature, is generally deemed accidental within the statutory view, whether the exertion or the circumstances be usual or unusual. The statutory criterion of an accident is met where either the cause or the .result is unexpected. Masse v. James H. Robinson Co., cited supra; Baltimore & O. R. Co. v. Zapf, 192 Md. 403, 64 A. 2d 139 (Ct. of App. 1949); Safeway Stores, Inc., v. Gilbert, 68 Ariz. 202, 203 Pac. 2d 870 (Sup. Ct. 1949); Gray’s Hatchery & Poultry Farms, Inc., v. Stevens, -- Del. -, 81 A. 2d 322 (Super. Ct. 1950). Any “untoward and unexpected event is an accident. * * * That is, 'accident’ is used in its popular sense.” Boody v. K. & C. Mfg. Co., 77 N. H. 208, 90 A. 859 (Sup. Ct. 1914). See, also, 58 Am. Jur., p. 756, and the cases there cited, and 27 North Carolina Law Review, pp. 509, 602.
The fear of malingering and the false claim should not serve to deny the principle. As in other cases, unless the claimant meets the burden of proof, he cannot recover. There can be no doubt that the plaintiff here has sustained the burden.
Mr. Chief Justice Vanderbilt joins in this opinion.
*602For reversal—Justices Case, Oliphant, WaciieNeeld and Burling—4.
For affirmance—Chief Justice Vanderbilt and Justice Hei-iee—2.