Court Opinion

ID: 9668583
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:18:46.537305+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:46.204744
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(concurring). We continue to pursue our melancholy way in these compensation cases, the Court dividing and re-dividing with monotonous regularity. as the egregious errors of the past continue to war with the humanitarian objectives of the act we must construe. Our “eminence” in these cases, as Dean Pound so cogently observed (see. Mr. Justice Black in Mack v. Reo Motors, Inc., 345 Mich 268, 281), is bad indeed. It will remain bad, and our people will continue to know a sorrow and disr .tress peculiar to them alone, until our Court forsakes its “stubborn” (I borrow the word from the Chief Justice) refusal, to correct its judge-made errors. Our Court, commendably quick to correct the errors of others, must be equally quick to correct its own. Since my dissent in Wieda v. American Box Board Company, 343 Mich 182, 191, pointing out Florida’s reversal of its former erroneous construction of the word “accident,” Arkansas has likewise acted. In the case of Bryant Stave & Heading Company v. White, 227 Ark 147 (296 SW2d 436), after commenting upon the controversy and litigation over the meaning of the word “accident,” the court said: “We agree that litigants, lawyers and members of the commission are entitled to a definite and unequivocal settlement of the legal question' here posed. In undertaking to do so, we see no valid réason for not aligning Arkansas with the- decided weight of authority on the subject.” The court then concludes':
“Notwithstanding anything we may have said in prior cases, we hold that an accidental injury arises *583out of the 'employment when the required exertion producing the injury is too great for 'the person undertaking; the work, whatever the degree of exertion-or the condition of'his health, provided the exertion is either the sole or a contributory cause of the injury. In short, that an injury is accidental when either the cause or result, is unexpected or accidental, although the .work being done is usual or ordinary. The judgment of the circuit court affirming the award is accordingly affirmed.”
Thus in one State after another a rule of reason consonant with the purpose of the act replaces arbitrary judicial fiat. Neither .Arkansas, it will be noted, nor Florida acted under the whip of legislative compulsion. Bach was secure in the knowledge that a pourt has inherent power to purge itself of its own errors. Failing in this'duty, the day inevitably approaches when a court will stand alone, while the stream of life flows by, avoiding, but not being impeded by,- the curious derelict in its path.
Our problems are multiplied, not simplified, by the current outpourings of opinion. It is now sought to perpetuate, with respect to our rulings concerning this simple term, accident, the spbrious distinction between the ill and the healthy, between the weak and the strong, between those suffering to some degree from the ordinary diseases of life (who doesn’t?) and those with no ailments or defects antedating'the Accident. This is clear from Croff v. Lakey Foundry & Machine Co., 320 Mich 581, 585, heavily relied upon this- date. It is pointed out in Groff “it can hardly be said that the 1943 amendment -broadens the act to' allow an award in a case of aggravation of. a pre-existing disease without. An accident or fortuitous event.” But, it is concluded, the disabilities of one without pre-existing disease or condition (“as distinguished from disabilities resulting from the aggravation of pre-existing disease or *584condition”) are compensable without proof of accident or fortuitous event.
Thus mankind is placed in 2 categories as respects ¡recovery for accidental injuries: those with a preexisting “disease or condition” and those not so 'handicapped. This classification we completely reject. Nothing is better settled in compensation law than that the act takes the workmen as they arrive at the plant gate. Some are weak and some are strong. Some, particularly as age advances, have a pre-existing “disease or condition” and some have not. No matter. All must work. They share equally the hazards of the press and their families the stringencies of want, and they all, in our opinion, share equally in the protection of the act in event of accident, regardless of their prior condition of health. See 18 NACCA Law Journal 90-92, an cases there cited.
How could a differentiation so monstrous, so destructive of the purposes of the act, ever have gained even a foothold in our law? Its history betrays its illegitimacy. Prior to the 1943 amendments, nothing was better settled in our Michigan law than that an employer took an employee as he found him. (He takes him “as is,” it is sometimes phrased.) It was recognized that just as every man brings with him to the job some strength, he brings some weaknesses. None is perfect. In the early case of LaVeck v. Parke, Davis & Co., 190 Mich 604 (LRA 1916D, 1277), we considered the case of a claimant with a pre-existing arteriosclerosis who had suffered the rupture of a cerebral blood vessel under conditions of unusual exertion. In affirming his award we cited with approval the English decision of Hughes *585v. Clover Clayton & Co., 2 BWCC 15, 17,  quoting, in part, as follows (p 607):
“ ‘Every man brings some disability with Mm. Any exertion or any external action wMch might have been innocuous to a man in good health may produce most serious results to the workman bringing with him, as I have said, some disability. This man brought with him a disability of a serious nature — an aneurism — which I quite agree might have caused his death at some time or other without any exertion, usual or unusual. But in this case we have this fact found that a strain incurred by the workman in the ordinary discharge of his duties caused the rupture from which he died. As I read the decisions in the House of Lords, it is not open to this Court to say that this is not an accident.’ ”
Likewise, in St. Clair v. A. H. Meyer Music House, 211 Mich 285, we were equally explicit in granting compensation:
“The fact that applicant was predisposed because of disease to this form of attack is immaterial and ‘has nothing to do with the question whether what ¡befell him is to be regarded as an accident or not. See LaVeck v. Parke, Davis & Co., 190 Mich 604, at page 607.”
See, also, Hurley v. Selden-Breck Construction Co., 193 Mich 197; Monk v. Charcoal Iron Company of America, 246 Mich 193.
Thus we clearly established at an early date that disability caused by an aggravation of a pre-existing condition by a compensable event was compensable. We were not concerned with the nature of the preexisting condition. Our attention, rather, went to the nature of the event causing the final disability. We did not attempt to separate those in perfect *586health from those hot so blessed.- Michael LaVeck’s pre-existing arteriosclerosis .did not bar him- from compensability when his final disability was brought about by the conditions under, which' he worked.
, Did the 1943 amendments change this ? To" our minds it is clear that they did not. What was sought to be changed by the amendments was our erroneous interpretation of the word “accident.” (This interpretation had been taken from a short-lived decision of an intermediate English appellate court, which had been overruled in England 10 years prior to its embrace by us. See Wieda dissent, supra.) Changed it was.. The terminology in part 2 of the act now spoke in terms of a “single event,” a term comprehending both cause and effect.. The word “accident” was eliminated in many places, but .even where retained, as in the ■ title, it could no longer be interpreted, as we had formerly done, to exclude the mishap in one’s ordinary work. That is to say, no longer would it be- possible to describe a disaster as not an accident simply because one was doing his ordinary work in his ordinary way. If the result was unanticipated and unexpected the result was as “accidental” in legal effect as in ordinary speech. My conclusions in this regard are found in my dissent in Wieda, supra (p 204): ■
“Our Court (had) 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 wo.rd ‘accident,’ even'where'applicable in the. act and fit’s *587title, 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.”
These conclusions, it will be observed, are fully consistent with the underlying purpose of the act, to require industry to bear the burden of the injuries, rather than have them fall with crushing force on the the workman' himself. If lifting a garbage can (Hagopian v. City of Highland Park, 313 Mich 608, compensation denied) or a gun barrel (Anderson v. General Motors Corporation, 313 Mich 630, compensation granted) actually disables the workman, his inability to work is' an industrial casualty for which compensation is payable under our act (particularly as amended). He is equally disabled, of' course, if the garbage can accidentally rolls off the -truck and hurts him, but in either event we note that the result is the same (disability) and the cause actually arises out of the work. It will be observed that in neither .of these instances have we even mentioned the preexisting health of the injured workman. Given the injury in fact and the causal connection (neither of which is questioned in Eula Sheppard’s case) the state of the workman’s pre-existing health is immaterial.
This discussion of the effect of the 1943 amendments should not omit some mention of the relationship between the occupational injury and the accidental injury since they must be viewed together in the construction of the act. As we have seen, the 1943 amendments completely wiped out the requirement of “accidental” injury as our Court had theretofore erroneously construed it. The title of the act, however, still refers to “compensation for * .* * *588accidental injury.” This titular description, read with section 1 of part 2, justifies the conclusion, expressed in the Wieda dissent, supra, that the legislature “has now authorized compensation for personal injury due to disease, for personal injury not attributable to a single event, and for personal injuries attributable to a single event.” The latter is the accident referred to in the title. It includes the fortuitous cause. It likewise includes the fortuitous result, the mishap arising in one’s ordinary work. Disability, then, to be compensable, need not arise from an occupational disease, nor need it arise solely from an occupational injury. If it be accidentally suffered in the work performed it is likewise com-pensable. Without this latter recovery provision, the act would be administratively chaotic and an open invitation to litigation. What of the plant guard, supervising target practice on the indoor range ? What of the air-hammer operator? In each case injury is suffered, in one of the ear, in the other of the arm. Is it occupational injury, peculiar to the business? It might well be so analyzed. Or, since there is always a last single shot, a last blast of the hammer, which precedes the final collapse, has not the workman actually received a personal injury “attributable to a single event” (namely, the last blow) ? Such analysis would seem equally valid. But why undertake such minute (if not impossible) dissection? The act wisely relieves us of such necessity. The injury is compensable under either anaylsis. So it is that we interpret the 1943 amendments, an interpretation, we might add, in full harmony with the aspirations and hopes embodied in the nationwide compensation legislation. As Horovitz so well puts it in his treatise on Workmen’s Compensation (p 8):
“(The workmen’s compensation law) was a revolt from the old common law and the creation of a complete substitute therefor, and not a mere im*589provement thereon. It meant to make liability dependent on a relationship to the job, in a liberal, humane fashion, with litigation reduced to a minimum.”
It is high time that we of the Court lifted our eyes from the intricacies of spelling and punctuation and looked to the beneficent purposes of the legislation. It is not our function to deny by a grudging construction of the law what our people have seen fit to grant.
In this connection we reject, without qualification, the asserted “general rule of interpretation” quoted to us this date, to the effect that “the workmen’s compensation law, being in derogation of the common law, must be strictly construed.” The substitution, for thought, of this legal cliché has rarely had more lamentable result than in this area, depriving for years, as it has, the casualties of industry of the benefits awarded by a compassionate people. No one denies that statutes in derogation of the common law are to be strictly construed. But the maxim is not a corpus juris. 'Nor does it, like one of the Ten Commandments, contain within its limited borders either an unalterable moral principle or an inflexible command. It has, in truth, a companion, from which it cannot be separated, save by the feckless or the reckless: that statutes must be interpreted to accomplish their legislative purpose. The proper statement, then, runs something like this: “The rule that statutes in derogation of the common law are to be strictly construed does not require such an adherence to the letter as would defeat an obvious legislative purpose or lessen the scope plainly intended to be given to the measure.” Jamison v. Encarnacion, 281 US 635, 640 (50 S Ct 440, 74 L ed 1082).
Finally, it will not be overlooked that the 1943 act also amended the occupational disease sections of part 7. In short, the total effect of the amendments was to broaden the application of the act, not *590to narrow it. So we held in Hargrove v. Ford Motor Co., 313 Mich 199.
In view of the above, what possible basis can there be, with reference to a compensable event, either for setting up 2 categories of claimants (those having pre-existing defects and those without) or seeking to perpetuate such categorization? That such is intended in the Sheppard Case seems beyond question. We have noted, heretofore, the distinction urged in the Croff Case between the disabilities of one- without pre-existing disease or condition “as distinguished from disabilities resulting from the aggravation of pre-existing disease or condition.” The same destructive differentiation is found -in many of the cases relied upon by my Brethren: Anderson v. General Motors Corp., 313 Mich 630, 638 (“Hagopian’s affliction was a'disease of the heart with which he was afflicted both 'prior to and subsequent to the alleged personal injury.”); Kasarewski v. Hupp Motor Car Corp., 315 Mich 225, 229 (“Plaintiff’s theory is that he sustained a personal injury by reason of aggravation of a pre-existing hernia, which aggravation impaired his earning capacity.”); Croff v. Lakey Foundry & Machine Co., 320 Mich 581, 583 (“Accordingly, defendant urges that plaintiff’s disability results from a pre-existing diseased condition aggravated by a non-fortuitous happening and that it is, therefore, under the holding of this Court in Hagopian v. City of Highland Park, 313 Mich 608, noncompensable.”) ; O’Neil v. W. R. Spencer Grocer Co., 316 Mich 320, 323, quoting from Hagopian v. City of Highland Park, 313 Mich 608, 621 (“The amended act itself was not intended to cover aggravation of a preexisting disease without an accident or fortuitous •event”). The recent case of Nichols v. Central Crate & Box Company, 340 Mich 232, 234, 235, is equally explicit: " .....
*591“In all of these cases it was held that to be compensable there must be an accident ór fortnitons event which aggravates the pre-existing physical condition to cause a disability. Typical is the statement in Arnold  (p 664) that ‘the aggravation of a previously existing nonoecupational disease is not compensable under part 2 of the workmen’s compensation law unless the aggravating injury is accidental in character.’ Plaintiff relies on Robbins v. Original Gas Engine Co., 191 Mich 122. This Court there sáid (p 128):
“ ‘It is not sufficient that there be an nntisual and unanticipated result; the means must.be accidental— involuntary and unintended. There must, too, be some proximate connection between accidental means and the injurious result.’
“Was plaintiff’s pre-existing condition aggravated by an accident or fortuitous event arising out of and in the course of his employment by defendant?”
We will forbear additional citation. The cases abound in such statements.
(We note at this point a possible additional source of confusion creeping into our cases, now so replete with contradictions and inconsistencies that extreme care must be taken to avoid adding thereto. The unqualified phrase “disabilities resulting from personal injuries” is apt to be used as a phrase of art, to have reference only to the situation where one in good health is disabled. Thus used, it refers, were the thought to be fully stated, to “disabilities incurred by one without pre-existing disease or condition resulting from personal injuries.”' It is to be distinguished from the contrary situation, involving disabilities “resulting from the aggravation of preexisting disease or condition.”)
The erroneous differentiation between the claimant in good health and the one with a pre-existing *592disease or condition goes back, to a confused and confusing pair of cases decided the same day in 1946, Hagopian v. City of Highland Park, supra; and Anderson v. General Motors Corporation, supra. Each case involved a strain due to lifting. Hagopian was denied compensation. Anderson received it. In Hagopian 2 opinions were filed and in Anderson 3.
We will not analyze in detail each of these 5 opinions. They have received ample attention elsewhere. It was Mr. Justice North’s concurring opinion in the Anderson Case, however, which most clearly sets forth the alleged distinction between that case and Hagopian. In view of the reliance thereon in the leading case of Croff v. Lakey Foundry & Machine Co., supra, and other cases cited and relied upon this date, some limited additional comment may be justified.
The point first made by Justice North is an attempted differentiation of the injuries received by each. It is stated that Anderson’s personal injury (he lifted gun barrels as a part of his work) arose out of and in the course of his employment. Hago-pian also lifted, as a part of his work, garbage cans, but as to him, we are told (p 638), his “affliction was a disease of the heart with which he was afflicted both prior to and subsequent to the alleged personal injury. His disease did not arise out of his employment.” This misses the point. It was his injury which arose out of his employment. It came directly from the lifting (as did Anderson’s) and an ordinary disease of life was what was aggravated thereby. The case parallels LaVeck, supra. What LaVeck had was a pre-existing arteriosclerosis. It was as true with him as with Hagopian that his “affliction was (arteriosclerosis) with which he was afflicted both prior to and subsequent to the alleged personal injury. His disease did not arise out of his employment.” But his injury did, just as did Hagopian’s, *593and we affirmed LaVeck’s award of compensation by a nnanimons Court.
The learned Justice continues (Anderson, pp 638, 639):
“If, as provided in the act: ‘Ordinary diseases of life to which the public is generally exposed outside of the employment shall not be compensable’ (PA 1912 [1st Ex Sess], No 10, pt 7, § 1, as added by PA 1937, No 61, and amended by PA 1943, No 245 [CLS 1945, § 8485-1, Stat Ann 1945 Cum Supp § 17.-220]),  then it follows that aggravation of such ‘ordinary diseases,’ in the absence of a fortuitous happening which is an approximate cause of the aggravation, is not compensable. Such was the holding in Chief Justice Btjtzel’s opinion in the Hagopian Case, supra.”
The confusion in thought in both of the above excerpts with respect to the amendment is clear. Anderson and Hagopian were part 2 cases, involving alleged accidents at work. Part 7, the occupational disease sections, was not involved. This talk, then, of an accident as being related to “an ordinary disease of life” or “characteristic of and peculiar to the employment,” all coming from part 7 of the act, served only to confuse the application of 2 different concepts and led, probably inevitably, to the erroneous conclusion that aggravation of an ordinary disease in the absence of a fortuitous happening was not compensable. Yet it was well established by this time that aggravation of an ordinary disease of life by “accident” (as formerly defined) was compensable (LaVeck v. Parke, Davis & Co., supra, and cases cited therewith) and it should follow that aggravation of an ordinary disease by the newly-defined and broadened term “accident” should be no less compensable. We had said in St. Clair v. A. H. Meyer Music House, 211 Mich 285, 287, that, “The *594•fact that applicant was predisposed because of disease to this form of attack is immateriál and bas nothing to do with the question whether what befell him is to be regarded as an accident or not,” and to my mind obviously, legislative substitution in 1943 of the-words “personal injury” for “accident” made no change in the principle there stated. We should, subsequently to 1943, as well as before, look at the relationship between the employment and the claimed resultant disability rather than the nature of the victim’s health prior to disablement. This is not to say that difficult questions of causation are not presented in the pre-existing defect or condition cases, but these difficulties of proof do not even remotely justify our reading into the personal-injury-by-single-event cases our judge-invented distinction between the healthy (who will and should be compensated if there is direct causation) and the sick (who, we have erroneously held, will not be compensated in spite of direct causation). What we have actually done in this area, as in so many others in the compensation field, is to invade the province of the trier of the facts. The determination of causation rests with the commission. We are not a super-compensation commission any more than we are a super-racing commission. Hazel Park Racing Association, Inc., v. Racing Commissioner, 343 Mich 1, dissent, 10. We urge our return to our exercise of an appellate function.
It seems clear, on this phase of the case, that frona the very inception of the act until 1943, compensation was awarded if an accident resulted in a disability, or aggravated an existing condition, whether such condition was an ordinary disease of life or not. The broadening of the act by both the 1937 amendments and the 1943 amendments (which latter corrected óur former erroneous interpretation of the word “accident”) did not serve to reduce this cov*595erage or lessen the protection under the act, and should not be so interpreted. The restrictive interpretation of the act here noted has not, unfortunately, been without parallel elsewhere in the act (see Black, J., in Mack v. Reo Motors, Inc., supra, dissent, 270, commenting upon our repudiation of an early case, our soundly-reasoned and widely-quoted intermission case, Haller v. City of Lansing, 195 Mich 753 [LRA1917E, 324]). Many of our early leading cases, written at a time when the act was new and its basic principles under fresh and careful examination, have been overlaid with layer after layer of doubt, vacillation, and confusion. We may well recall, with Mr. Justice Frankfurter in United States v. Union Pacific R. Co., 353 US 112, 136 (77 S Ct 685, 1 L ed2d 693) that:
“This body of opinions, written by members of the court more steeped in public land law and more sensitive to the circumstances of the times than we can possibly be, seems to me to constitute too weighty a construction of section 2 to be now overturned. It is of course the court’s duty to enforce the will of congress once that has been reasonably ascertained from the language in which congress expressed its will. But the ascertainment of what congress meant from what it said, in legislation like that before the court, does not gain clarity with time so as to displace the uniform construction put by this court from the beginning, almost 80 years ago, on what congress said. The court cannot in 1957 retrieve what congress granted in 1862. The hindsight that reveals the act as lavish or even profligate ought not to influence the court to narrow the scope of the 1862 grant by reading it in the light of a policy that did not mature until half a century thereafter.”
We have spoken heretofore of the reluctance of our Court to correct its lamentable errors of the past. Twin guardians of the inviolability of the *596error are now presented to us, the one made the more authoritative by its dress in Latin garb, stare decisis, the other being a “judicial assumption,” namely, “that the legislature has been content with (our) interpretation because of its failure to exercise its independent prerogative to restate the provision.”
There can, of course, be no disposition on the part of any responsible court to deal grossly with the doctrine of adherence to precedent. We need not expatiate upon the virtues thereof, the securing thereby of certainty and stability in the law, the protection of recognized rules of property and the repose of titles. As Cardozo put it in his Nature of Judicial Process (p 149): “I think adherence to precedent should be the rule and not the exception.” And so, of course, it is. The great Justice amplifies his thought in the pages following (pp 150-152) :
“I think that when a rule, after it has been duly tested by experience, has been found to be inconsistent with the sense of justice or with the social welfare, there should be less hesitation in frank avowal and full abandonment. We have had to do this sometimes in the field of constitutional law. Perhaps we should do so oftener in fields of private law where considerations of social utility are not so aggressive and insistent. There should be greater readiness to abandon an untenable position when the rule to be discarded may not reasonably be supposed to have determined the conduct of the litigants, and particularly when in its origin it was the product of institutions or conditions which have gained a new significance or development with the progress of the years. In such circumstances, the words of Wheeler, J., in Dwy v. Connecticut Co., 89 Conn 74, 99 (92 A 883, LRA1915E, 800, Ann Cas 1918D, 270), express the tone and temper in which problems should' be met: ‘That court best serves the law which recognizes that the rules of law which grew up in a remote *597generation may, in the fullness of experience, he found to serve another generation badly, and which •discards the old rule when it finds that another rule of law represents what should be according to the -established and settled judgment of society, and no -considerable property rights have become vested in reliance upon the old rule. It is thus great writers upon the common law have discovered the source and method of its growth, and in its growth found its health and life. It is not and it should not be stationary. Change of this character should not be left to the legislature.’ If judges have woefully misinterpreted the mores of their day, or if the mores of their day are no longer those of ours, they ought not to tie, in helpless submission, the hands of their successors.”*
But this rule of common sense and sound judicial discretion (i.e., adherence to precedent) should not be transformed into an implacable tenet. We are dealing with competing considerations, the desirability for certainty and stability in the law on the one hand, on the other the necessity that our interpretations of the law, particularly of remedial social legislation, keep abreast of changing social and economic forces in our society. The adjustment between these competing considerations is a matter of the utmost delicacy, an adjustment in which many complex factors, not the least of which is proper judicial restraint, all play their part. Where error is manifest and injustice rife, however, our course of action is clear. The principle involved, was well expressed in 7 B.CL, Courts, § 35, p 1008:
*598“But the strong respect for precedent which is ingrained in our legal system is a reasonable respect which balks at the perpetuation of error, and it is the manifest policy of our courts to hold the doctrine of stare decisis subordinate to legal reason and justice, and to depart therefrom when such departure is necessary to avoid the perpetuation of pernicious error.”
The classic condensation of the principle is found not in the text but in Ellison v. Georgia R. Co., 87 Ga 691, 696 (13 SE 809), as cited in Moore and Ogle-bay’s “Stare Decisis and the Law of the Case,” 21 Tex L Rev 514, 534, wherein Chief Justice Bleckley holds:
“ ‘When an error of this magnitude, and which moves in so wide an orbit competes with truth in the struggle of existence, the maxim for a supreme court, supreme in the majesty of duty as well as in the majesty of power, is not stare decisis, but fiat justitia mat coelum’ (let justice be done though the heavens fall).”
To those who fear the unsettling effect of overruling precedent, it should be noted that certainty in the law is impeded, not aided, by a court’s ostensible adherence to stare decisis, while avoiding the effect thereof through the process of distinguishing cases on trivial fact differentiations, which, having served their purpose in one case, are abandoned in the next. In short, the doctrine of stare decisis is beneficial and desirable but it should neither be used as a crutch, substituting the majesty of its authority for the drudgery of research and exposition, nor as a cyclone cellar in which we of the Court can find ready refuge from the hurricanes born of our own mistakes.
Stare decisis, then, upon both reason and authority, offers no obstacle to our judicial corrections of our past error. Has our error, however, been rati*599fied by tbe legislature ? In other words, has the legislature, in fact, “been content” with our past interpretation of the word accident “because of its failure to exercise its independent prerogative to restate the provision?”
In shortest terms, bluntly put, the argument is that silence gives consent. It is suggested that we accord this catch phrase the dignity of a legal axiom. In its profundities, its cogency, its symmetry and its expression of fundamental truth, we are to find the answer to a complex question of statutory construction affecting the lives of thousands and our whole industrial economy. There is not a shred of justification therefor under these circumstances. Silence at best is ambiguous. Even in the law of evidence more than mere silence must be shown to impress upon the trier that silence was the equivalent of consent. See 4 Wigmore on Evidence (3d ed 1940), p 70; Lenhoff’s Comments, Cases and Materials on Legislation, 816. It was Mr. Justice Rutledge, concurring in Cleveland v. United States, 329 US 14 (67 S Ct 13, 91 L ed 12), who put the matter in its proper setting (pp 22-24):
“Notwithstanding recent tendency, the idea cannot always be accepted that congress, by remaining silent and taking no affirmative action in repudiation, gives approval to judicial misconstruction of its enactments. See Girouard v. United States, 328 US 61, 69 (68 S Ct 826, 90 L ed 1084). It is perhaps too late now to deny that, legislatively speaking as in ordinary life, silence in some instances may give consent. But it would be going even farther beyond reason and common experience to maintain, as there are signs we may be by way of doing, that in legislation any more than in other affairs silence or non-action always is acquiescence equivalent to action.
“There are vast differences between legislating by doing’ nothing and legislating by positive enactment, both in the processes by which the will of congress is *600derived and stated and in the clarity and certainty of the expression of its will. And there are many reasons, other than to indicate approval of what the courts have done, why congress may fail to take affirmative action to repudiate their misconstruction of its duly-adopted laws. Among them may he the sheer pressure of other and more important business. See Moore v. Cleveland R. Co. (CCA), 108 F2d 656, 660. At times political considerations may work to forbid taking corrective action. And in such cases, as well as others, there may be a strong and proper tendency to trust to the courts to correct their own errors, see Girouard v. United States, supra, at 69, as they ought to do when experience has confirmed or demonstrated the errors’ existence.
“The danger of imputing to congress, as a result of its failure to take positive or affirmative action through normal legislative processes, ideas entertained by the court concerning congress’ will, is illustrated most dramatically perhaps by the vacillating and contradictory courses pursued in the long line of decisions imputing to ‘the silence of congress’ varied effects in commerce clause cases. That danger may be and often is equally present in others. More often than not, the only safe assumption to make from congress’ inaction is simply that congress does not intend to act at all. Cf., United States v. American Trucking Assns., 310 US 534, 550 (60 S Ct 1059, 84 L ed 1345). At best the contrary view can be only an inference, altogether lacking in the normal evidences of legislative intent and often subject to varying views of that intent. In short, although recognizing that by silence congress at times may be taken to acquiesce and thus approve, we should be very sure that, under all the circumstances of a given situation, it has done so before we so rule and thus at once relieve ourselves from and shift to it the burden of correcting what we have done wrongly. The matter is particular, not general,' notwithstanding earlier exceptional treatment and more recent tendency. Just as dubious legislative history is at *601times much overridden, so also is silence or inaction often mistaken for legislation.”
Let us attempt, however, to apply the approval-by-silence doctrine to the precise situation before us. That is to say, let us assume that the silence of the legislature may, despite its ambiguity, be taken as an “intent to adopt such (i.e., the antecedent judicial) construction.” Let us, in fact, assume that the legislature, by formal and appropriate action, has so informed us. Where are we now?
The answer is that we are still in the wilderness of doubt and confusion. The fact of the matter is that prior judicial authority may be found in this jurisdiction on many inconsistent propositions in compensation law. Does the legislature intend to adopt the earlier cases decided by this Court or the later? Does it intend to adopt the cases saying yes or the cases saying no?
More specifically, does the legislature intend, for instance, to adopt the reasoning of Robbins v. Original Gas Engine Co., 191 Mich 122? This case we find cited by the majority in Wieda, supra, and in one of today’s opinions,  for the proposition that:
“ ‘It is not sufficient that there be an unusual and unanticipated result; the means must he accidental— involuntary and unintended. There must, too, be some proximate connection between accidental means and the injurious result.’ ”
In point of fact, however, the Robbins Case made the above-quoted statement of insurance law (from United States Mutual Accident Association v. Barry, 131 US 100 [9 S Ct 755, 33 L ed 60]), only to repudiate it. It rules precisely to the contrary, stating in part (pp 128, 129):
*602“It is doubtful, however, if in applying our statute, its general purpose being considered, the court should exactly follow the rules suggested and applied in the cases referred to. The statute seems to contemplate that an accidental injury may result by mere mischance: that accidental injuries may be due to carelessness, not wilful, to fatigue, and to miscalculation of the effects of voluntary action.”
Thus the Robbins Court construed the meaning of “accident,” to the “miscalculation of the effects of voluntary action.” Is this the meaning adopted by the legislative silence? Will the legislature adopt Watson v. Publix Riviera Theatre, 255 Mich 115? In this case recovery was granted despite the fact that there was no fortuitous cause, the Court relying upon the holding in Robbins, last quoted. (Nichols v. Central Crate & Box Co., supra, 236, however, points to Watson as truly a fortuitous event, for in Watson, it is said “plaintiff’s leg gave way and he fell.”) Does the legislature intend to adopt Hurley v. Selden-Breck Construction Co., 193 Mich 197? There a brick mason, doing his ordinary work in his ordinary way, suffered a hernia and received compensation despite, in fact, his pre-existing infirmity. Or, on the other hand, is it the presumed intent of the legislature to “adopt” only those cases in which it has been held, in reliance upon the long-overruled intermediate appellate English case, that compensation forrindustrial accident may be had only if there is a fortuitous cause?
The opinions submitted this date do not tell us. It is unnecessary to more than remind the bench and bar that the asserted doctrine of legislative adoption of judicial interpretations bjr either silence or, in fact, re-enactment, whatever the merits of the doctrine, can never be applied where the decisions themselves are in turmoil and conflict. This is a proposition to which we shall not cite authority. Nor shall *603we vex the proposition, possibly implicit in what has gone heretofore, that a court has only one opportunity to interpret a statute. Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 US 64 (58 S Ct 817, 82 L ed 1188, 114 ALR 1487), conceding the constitutional overtones, may well be more persuasive on this point than Montesquieu.
Eula Sheppard should recover. The act authorizes compensation for accidents suffered at work, and the word “accident,” after the 1943 amendments, comprehending a personal injury due to a single event, includes both the unexpected cause and the unexpected result. Her prior physical condition, whether in good health or poor, is completely immaterial to the recovery sought by her. There is no legislative impediment now, nor has there ever been, to our own correction of our own errors.
This case was submitted to us some time back. In the intervening period, as drafts of opinions, and conferences, have come and gone the Court has lost one cherished Brother and gained another. Under these circumstances, Mr. Justice Voelker has deemed it proper to authorize our statement that, although he cannot participate, he is in full accord with the reasoning expressed in this opinion, and the result reached.
Affirmed. Costs to appellee.
Addendum :
Since writing the above opinion, the various opinions in the case of Coombe v. Penegor, 348 Mich 635, have been circulated to the Court. It has been decided, apparently, that the Sheppard opinion is not to be published independently of Coombe, but concurrently therewith, and, also, that discussion of the result of the Coombe Case is pertinent as well to the Sheppard opinion. This being the case, we will, in the interests of clarity, now make certain observa*604tions respecting the Coombe Case in its relation to the case (Sheppard) primarily before us. For it is to be hoped that today’s pair of compensation cases, Sheppard-C'oom&e, will not be as prolific of disagreement, controversy, and unsound distinctions as that prior ill-starred pair, Hagopian-Anderson,  both decided March 4, 1946.
We had pointed out to us in considerable detail in Eula Sheppard’s case the importance of distinguishing between the workman with a pre-existing illness and him not so afflicted. Such cases were to be separately ruled, for precedents in the one case were not precedents in the other. Why? It was simple: one involved a pre-existing defect and the other did not. This distinction was both mischeivous and unwarranted but nevertheless insisted upon, with citation of cases assertedly in support thereof. A majority has now affirmed Eula Sheppard’s award. She had no pre-existing disease or condition.
A majority is also affirming Ewart Coombe’s award. Did he have a pre-existing ailment? His attending doctor says he “must” have had. The appeal board says he “may” have had. The defendants say he did have. Notwithstanding, it is proposed that his award of compensation under part 2 be affirmed. Authority? Eula Sheppard’s case. Apparently it is no longer critical whether there was a preexisting “disease or condition” or not. We agree. It never was. But what has become' of stare decisis, which, so recently as Eula Sheppard, confronted us ? What of certainty in the law?
Error is thus to be quietly interred. The embarrassment of explicit overruling by name of prior inconsistent decisions will be avoided. But despite the tortuous paths trod, particularly this date, despite the gusts of words, despite the forays of relent*605less logic that have started on the broad highway of reason and ended in a cornfield of confusion — despite all this, one fact stands out: It is now agreed by others than the signers of this opinion that one suffering a personal injury due to a single event may receive award under part 2 without fortuitous cause and without regard to the claimant’s pre-existing health.
Wisdom, we agree, should never be rejected merely because it comes late. (Cf., United States v. Union Pacific R. Co., 91 US 72 [23 L ed 224].) But let future scholars make no mistake over the position of those signing this opinion. Eula Sheppard and Ewart Coombe are each entitled to compensation, not because we “eliminate” accident from the act, not because of the presence or lack of a pre-existing ailment (we will not speculate on which, if either, may in the future, consistent with certain of today’s opinions, be required) but simply because each suffered an unexpected mishap (an accident, in our everyday speech) while doing his ordinary worh in his ordinary way. See Wieda v. American Box Board Company, 343 Mich 182, dissent, p 191.
Black, J., concurred with Smith, J.

 The above quotation was persuasive to us in a prior situation where, similarly, our rule of law was completely out of harmony with modern conditions and where, it was said with much justification, “the application of the rule is more harmful than helpful and results in more injustice than it prevents.” (Bricker v. Green, 313 Mich 218, 234, 235 [163 ALR 697].) Mr. Justice Cardozo’s observations are equally applicable to the case before us and they lose none of their power with repetition.