Court Opinion

ID: 9723779
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:30:55.288988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:51.832262
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
[Filed August 4, 1970.]
Sharp, J.
In their Petition for Rehearing the Appellees state that this court has erred by equating industrial blindness with a “prior physical condition” within the meaning of Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305, and Appellees contend this court has ignored the dictates of Burns’ Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305.
The procedure the Industrial Board must follow is clear. Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305 dictates the initial procedures, as explained in Kinzie v. Gen. Tire & Rubber Co., 235 Ind. 592, 602, 134 N. E. 2d 212 (1956) :
“The above proviso not only authorized, it required that the board determine first the fact of a permanent injury and the extent thereof. It made it necessary that the board then determine whether the injury is a subsequent permanent injury. If it is determined that the injury is a subsequent injury, the board must then determine the extent of the injured person’s previous ‘permanent injury or physical condition.’ If from these facts it is determined that the permanent injury for which compensation is claimed ‘results only in an aggravation or increase of the previously sustained injury or physical condition,’ then, as the statute provides, the board ‘shall award compensation only for that part of such injury, or physical condition resulting from the subsequent permanent injury.’ § 40-1305, swpra.”
*13If the claimant is found to have a “prior physical condition” within the meaning of the statute, his compensation is limited to that prescribed by Burns’ Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1303 (b) (4). This section guides the amount of compensation for “aggravation or increase of a previously sustained injury or physical condition”. There is, however, a point beyond which an eye injury or condition cannot be further aggravated or increased: industrial blindness. If the claimant is industrially blind prior to the accident which gives rise to his claim, he may not recover compensation. He has lost nothing.
The question presented by Appellees’ Petition for Kehearing is whether Appellant’s sight should be gauged with glasses or without glasses in determining whether or not Appellant has a prior physical condition within the meaning of Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305. Appellees are correct that a prior physical condition or injury is not the same as industrial blindness. Our opinion decides the question by its holding, but the reasons should be amplified.
Under Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305 a claimant’s vision prior to his accident should be gauged with glasses in deciding the presence and extent of any prior physical condition or injury.
The purpose of Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305 as it now stands after the 1945 Amendment is to more fairly treat employers who have hired handicapped people, by not holding them liable for impairment of an already injured employee. The result is allowance of compensation only for the “aggravation or increase of a previously sustained injury or condition”. See Kinzie v. Gen. Tire & Rubber Co., supra. The amount of such compensation is computed according to Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1303 (b) (4).
As mentioned above, a finding of prior industrial blindness negates any recovery of compensation. Industrial blindness *14is gauged “with glasses”, or to state the rule in the positive, industrial sight is gauged “with glasses”. By the same token, any loss of vision which may be considered a prior physical injury or condition within the meaning of Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305 must be gauged “with glasses”. To hold otherwise would be to hold as a matter of law that everyone who wears glasses is handicapped, an absurb result we believe not contemplated by the statute. Persons with 20/20 vision “with glasses” are neither less productive nor more susceptible to injury, the two tests of the statute’s purpose set forth in the Kinzie case, supra, than employees with 20/20 vision without glasses.
Further, a “prior physical condition or injury” to vision must be gauged with glasses for Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305 to be consistent within itself. As prior industrial blindness negates any award of compensation, partial compensation for a prior condition not as severe must be a different measure of the same standard used to determine industrial blindness.
The obvious difficulty in this small area develops when the measure of compensation is consulted as a guide to interpreting the purpose of the whole, that is, when Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1303 (b) (4) is consulted with the hope of finding a consistent method of compensation in all cases. This is not possible under the present statute.
Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1303 (b) (4) regulates the amount of compensation to be awarded under two inconsistent sets of circumstances. Initially, this section determines the amount of compensation when a previously whole eye, i.e., an eye with no prior condition or injury, an eye that has 20/20 vision with glasses, is partially injured or destroyed, but not to the point of industrial blindness. Secondly, it also determines the amount of compensation when an eye with a prior condition or injury is injured or destroyed. The method of determining compensation is clear in the former *15case, but is confusing in the latter. Suppose a man with a prior physical condition, i.e., vision 20/180 with glasses and 20/400 without glasses, is injured in a compensable accident which reduces his vision to 20/200 with glasses and 20/500 without glasses. Because he has a prior physical condition or injury his compensation is measured by Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1303 (b) (4). His compensation is measured in two parts: First, his vision prior to the accident is completely ignored and he is immediately awarded 50% compensation because prior to the accident he was not industrially blind and has no effective vision without glasses after the accident even though he had none prior to the mishap; Secondly, he is awarded an additional 10% in compensation because with glasses he has lost 10% of his prior vision with glasses. Thus, his total award is 60% compensation, while another man whose vision with glasses prior to an accident is 20/200 will receive nothing. As is obvious, Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1303 (b) (4) works well for compensating a whole eye which is partially injured, but creates an anomaly when juxtaposed to fix compensation for an injury to an eye with a prior condition.
It might be argued that this anomaly could be avoided by gauging the prior condition or injury of Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305 without glasses. This solution merely begs the real question, faulty statute drafting; the anomaly would then merely exist in Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305 instead of Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1303 (b) (4). The problem would be the same: persons with uncorrected vision of less than 20/200 correctable to above 20/200, that is, people not industrially blind but with need of glasses for vision, would all be given at least 50% compensation as their vision uncorrected would still be below 20/200, plus they would receive whatever percentage of loss their corrected vision sustained from its prior corrected vision, not to exceed 50%, in addition to the above mentioned 50%. The man with 20/180 corrected vision who loses his remaining *16corrected vision would still collect 60%, while a man whose vision prior to the accident is 20/200 corrected will still collect nothing.
Further, to view vision without glasses as the determining factor in whether or not a claimant has a prior condition or injury within the meaning of Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305 would, as mentioned above, be an inconsistency within the section itself because industrial blindness, the cutoff point of any compensation, is viewed with glasses, and also because to so hold would brand all employees who wear glasses as handicapped within the meaning of the Workmen’s Compensation Statute without the policy reasons for such label and detriment being present.
In the instant case the Appellant’s vision with glasses prior to his accident was 20/20. Thus, he did not have a prior physical injury or condition within the meaning of Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1305. Absent such limitation, Appellant’s compensation is to be measured by Burns Indiana Statutes Annotated § 40-1303 (a) (3) as prescribed in the majority opinion.
The Petition for Rehearing is denied.
Pfaff and White, JJ., concur.
Hoffman, P. J., dissents without opinion.
Note. — Reported in 260 N. E. 2d 807.