Court Opinion

ID: 9774324
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:15:42.421215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:06.052017
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
CALVERT, Justice.
In his motion for rehearing Beasley calls our attention to the fact that in addition to awarding him a recovery of benefits for permanent, total incapacity, the trial court’s judgment, affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals, awarded a recovery of medical and hospital expenses incurred by him in 1962, and suggests that the judgment should have been affirmed to this extent.
Beasley bases his right to recover medical and hospital expenses on one sentence in section 7 of Art. 8306,1 as amended by Acts 1957, Reg. Ses., 55th Leg., ch. 397, p. 1186, as follows:
“The association shall furnish such 'medical aid, hospital services, nursing, chiropractic services, and medicines as may reasonably be required at the time of the injury and at any time thereafter to cure and relieve from the effects naturally resulting from the injury.”
The quoted sentence is but the first of several in sec. 7 in a quite lengthy act amending several sections of Arts. 8306, 8307 and 8309.
Before the 1957 amendment, sec. 7 of Art. 8306 provided, generally, that the insurer should furnish reasonable medical and hospital services for an injured workman during the first four weeks following injury, and, upon proper weekly certificates, should furnish additional medical services for a total period of not exceeding ninety-one days and additional hospital services for a total period of not exceeding one hundred and eighty days. The amendment of 1957 removed the time limitation on the insurer’s liability for medical and hospital services and abrogated the requirement for weekly certificates showing the necessity therefor. The Act of 1957 also added a new paragraph to section 5 of Art. 8307. As pertinent here, the new paragraph provides that an award of the Industrial Accident Board or a judgment of a court shall not include any cost or expense of medical or hospital services not actually furnished to an injured employee prior to the date of the award or judgment, and makes the first final award or judgment res judicata of the insurer’s liability for all such expense which could have been claimed up to the date of the award or judgment and of the issue that the injury of the employee is subject to the provisions of the compensation law with respect to such items. The paragraph further provides that the Board shall have continuing jurisdiction to make successive awards for the cost of medical and hospital services incurred after the first final award or judgment and during a six-month period immediately preceding each such award.
Beasley assumes that his claim for medical and hospital expenses is governed by the provision which authorizes the Board to make successive awards, and argues that inasmuch as such expenses were incurred within six months of the date on which his claim was filed, the award and judgment therefor should be upheld. Aside from the fact that this Court does not have constitutional power to change *40the plain wording of the statute, it is obvious that the claim is not governed by the provision authorizing successive awards. The award is not a successive award; it is the first award made by the Board with respect to Beasley’s claim for compensation, and the law governing the making of first awards controls.
 A part of the law governing the making of first awards is the requirement in sec. 4a of Art. 8307 that claims for compensation be filed within six months of the day of injury unless good cause for late filing be shown. Claims for expenses incurred for medical and hospital services may be prosecuted by the injured workman or by owners of the claims, and right of recovery may be adjudicated by the Board and by the courts in the same or in entirely separate proceedings and suits. Maryland Casualty Co. v. Hendrick Memorial Hospital, 141 Tex. 23, 169 S.W.2d 969 (1943). In this case the Board made only one award. It directed Texas Casualty to make payment to the owners of the claims for medical and hospital services and to pay certain compensation benefits to Beasley. The Board’s award was vacated when Texas Casualty filed its suit to set the award aside, and it liability for payment of the medical and hospital expenses could only be established by cross-action. The owners of the claims did not file a cross-action. Beasley did. In his cross-action Beasley alleged that he was obligated to pay the expenses and he sought recovery of the amount thereof. We need not decide whether a lack of diligence by Beasley in filing his claim for compensation would have defeated a suit by the owners had they sought recovery on their claims for medical and hospital services. That is not the case before us. We are well convinced, however, that if an injured employee pays such expenses, or recognizes his obligation therefor and sues for them and the owners are content to look alone to him for payment, such expenses become a part of his claim for compensation within the meaning of sec. 4a, Art. 8307 and are barred when his claim for weekly compensation benefits is barred.
We have found no Texas case dealing with this question, but to hold otherwise would be contrary to the spirit of the limiting statute. Payments made or obligations incurred by an employee for medical or hospital services are incidental to his claim for statutory benefits for incapacity and are usually much less. The Legislature can hardly have intended that while an employee’s claim for weekly benefits should be barred by his negligence in filing claim therefor, he should nevertheless be entitled to recover his medical and hospital expenses. Analagous and in accord with our holding are Dornbos v. Bloch and Guggenheimer, 326 Mich. 626, 40 N.W.2d 749 (1950); Coombs v. Nash Refrigeration Co., 18 N.J.Misc. 421, 14 A.2d 44 (1940); Trehern v. Grafe Auto Company, 232 Miss. 854, 100 So.2d 786 (1958); Canada Dry Bottling Co. of Florida v. White, 153 Fla. 70, 13 So.2d 595, 596; and Cook v. International Paper Co., La.App., 42 So.2d 558, 560, in which it is held that statutory periods of limitation barring a workman’s right to compensation benefits also bar his right to recover medical and hospital expenses.
The motion for rehearing presents no new matter other than that discussed. The motion for rehearing is overruled.

. All Article references are to Vernon’s Texas Civil Statutes.