Court Opinion

ID: 9619503
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:28:47.250827+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:18:35.566724
License: Public Domain

McGraw, Justice,

dissenting:

I dissent. The majority opinion misinterprets the Workmen’s Compensation law and is devoid of heart. This is not the first time, however, in recent times that the Court has failed to respond to a working man from whom the breath of life has fled as the consequence of an industrial environment to which he was exposed as he worked in the pursuit of his daily bread. Hudson v. State Workmen’s Compensation Commissioner, No. 14243, W. Va. January 23, 1979, (McGraw, J. dissenting).
In denying Mr. Boggs an award for permanent total disability, the Court looks at the medical history and holds that an artificially induced pneumothorax resulting in a permanently collapsed lung is a “disease” rather than an “injury.” It is reasoned that the pneumoth-orox is a “direct product” of claimant’s prior condition of *419tuberculosis. While this may be true, it misses the point, and does not properly respond to the issue of whether the pre-existing disability is itself an “injury” as opposed to a “disease.”
The evidence is uncontradicted that Mr. Boggs suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis in 1949. In the treatment of the condition, a surgical procedure known as an artificial pneumothorox was employed. This procedure involved injection of air into the pleural space surrounding the affected lung. The result of the treatment was to collapse the lung, the idea being to rest it. In such procedure it is assumed that after the lung heals it may be reinflated. In this case, however, after the lung was collapsed by the surgical procedure, it never again functioned as before the surgery. It is clear that the lung was badly injured as a result of the surgical procedure and not as the result of the ravages of the claimant’s disease, tuberculosis.
The Court now avoids the plain language of the second injury statute and rewrites that language by judicial interpretation, citing Jordan v. State Workmen’s Compensation Commissioner, 156 W. Va. 159, 191 S.E.2d 497 (1970), as authority for the proposition that an “injury” must be caused “by accident.” That is not the law of this jurisdiction. In Jordan, the Court was dealing with the definition of a compensable injury. The second injury statute contemplates physical impairment “caused by a previous injury, irrespective of its compensability.” W. Va. Code § 23-3-1 (emphasis added). Therefore, it was not necessary that Mr. Boggs’ collapsed lung be an “injury by accident.” It need only be an “injury.” This Court has previously interpreted the plain language of the Workmen’s Compensation statute to define “injury” to include a condition such as that from which Mr. Boggs suffers. Such an interpretation is entirely reasonable, yet today, without rational explanation, the Court takes a divergent course.
To summarize, Mr. Boggs was injured through treatment by a surgical procedure that resulted in incapacity *420and disability. HÍe-v^ís" subsequently exposed to the hazards of coal miner pneumonoconiosis and, according to the doctors, his impairment from that exposure, combined with his “injury”, resulted in total disability. Mr. Boggs, the coal miner with pneumonoconiosis, which the Workmen’s Compensation statute was intended to benefit, is denied, by this opinion, what is rightfully his — a total disability award under Workmen’s Compensation. Mr. Boggs is denied justice.