Court Opinion

ID: 9575615
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:15:26.176726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:48:48.301435
License: Public Domain

Buchanan, J.,
dissenting.
The court holds that the thirty days within which a claimant must give notice to his employer under section 2-1 of the 1948 act begins to run on the day when a reasonably prudent man would think that probably he ought to see a doctor. I am unable to agree with that interpretation and with the conclusion reached as the result of applying it to the facts of this case.
The statute provides that the notice shall be given within thirty days after the claimant (not the prudent man) “first experiences a distinct manifestation, or a diagnosis is made.” I think this means that the manifestation must be distinct to the claimant, reasonably sufficient to cause him to believe that he had an occupational disease, considering his mental qualifications.
The change in the language of section 2-1 made by the 1948 amendment is significant. That section in the 1944 act required that “within thirty days after the first distinct manifestation of an occupational disease,” written notice should be given to the employer. The 1948 amendment changed that language to read “within thirty days after claimant first experiences a distinct manifestation, or a diagnosis is made,” the notice shall be given.
The word distinct means clear, plain, well defined; and the word manifest means evident to the senses. Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2 ed., unabridged. A distinct manifestation of an occupational disease therefore denotes that its existence is clearly evident. The evidence of it should be clear to the claimant, not just to the prudent man. *341The statute is for the aid of those who have an occupational disease, whether they be prudent or imprudent. The practice of men in regard to seeing a doctor when they experience pain or illness is highly variable and hardly permits the establishment of a prudent man rule. I think the statute fixes a more workable standard; i. e., the first appearance of symptoms that clearly should apprise the particular claimant, learned or unlearned, alert or dull, as the case may be, that he has an occupational disease. Since his right to compensation for a disease he has contracted in the course of his employment may depend upon positive action in a prescribed time, the beginning of that time should not be determined by a formula that may well result in taking away the protection of the statute from those it was designed to aid.
The majority of the Commission denied compensation on the ground that since the claimant had silicosis prior to the effective date of the occupational disease law, there could be no recovery. The court disagrees with that view and holds that by the 1948 repeal of section 2-i this claimant was thereafter brought within the coverage of the compensation law. I agree with that view but I do not think that the right thus given him has been lost by reason of the limitations in the 1948 amendments of section 2-l and 2-m.
Commissioner Martin, in a minority opinion, held that “the record shows that defendant has had actual knowledge of the fact that claimant had silicosis ever since 1941.” That was when his chest was X-rayed by the State Health Department. Salyer testified without contradiction that this was done at the direction of Clinchfield and that all who worked were notified that “if they didn’t have these pictures they didn’t work.” The report from that examination was that Salyer had late first or early second-stage silicosis. Dr. Elliott testified that “it was sent to doctor and kept in medical file at the Clinchfield Coal Corporation.” The evidence is that Salyer never saw that report and knew nothing about what it contained. The fair inference is that since *342the company had the examination made, it knew the result of it. It produced the report at the hearing.
Section 2-1 provides for the giving of written notice “in accordance with sections twenty-three and twenty-four of this Act.” Section 23 (Code, 1950, sec. 65-82) provides that such notice shall be given, unless it can be shown that the employer, his agent or representative, “had knowledge of the accident.” Section 2-j (Code, 1950, sec. 65-46) provides that incapacity for work resulting from an occupational disease “shall be treated as the happening of an injury by accident.”
By an examination directed by it the company learned in 1941 that this claimant had silicosis, and that information, in writing, was in its files thereafter during the years in which claimant continued to work, as defendant knew, in the dust that caused his disease. That, it seems to me, ought to be evidence of actual knowledge sufficient to prevent the rejection of his claim on the ground of failure to give written notice. Department of Game, etc., Fisheries v. Joyce, 147 Va. 89, 136 S. E. 651.
I would hold, also, that Salyer’s claim is not barred by section 2-m (Code, 1950, sec. 65-49), providing that such claim shall be forever barred unless filed with the Industrial Commission within one year after the claimant first experiences a distinct manifestation, or diagnosis is made. The 1941 diagnosis, in possession of the defendant ever since, gave actual and continuous knowledge to it that Salyer had silicosis. It was not required, however, that within one year thereafter Salyer file lus claim, for the simple reason that there was nothing to claim. Ele then had no right to compensation and such right was not available to him until the amendment of July 1, 1948. I think Commissioner Martin was correct in holding that “the reasonable construction of section 2-m is that the limitations imposed thereby begin to run from events occurring after the Occupational Disease Law becomes effective.” While, as Commissioner Martin stated, the evidence establishes that the *343claimant had some pain in his chest and shortness of breath as early as December, 1947, the record does not show that such symptoms were, or should have been, a distinct manifestation to Salyer that he had silicosis. As the court’s opinion states, silicosis is an insidious disease, developing slowly and imperceptibly. The Chief Justice said in Pocahontas Corp. v. Richardson, 186 Va. 367, 371, 42 S. E. (2d) 260, 262:
“The disease may have developed to such an extent that it is susceptible of diagnosis by an experienced doctor with the aid of X-ray and yet the objective symptoms may be so slight that the victim may be entirely unconscious of having contracted the disease.”
Many people have pains in the chest and shortness of breath who do not have silicosis. The record indicates that this claimant is an uneducated man of limited mentality. Even the physicians qualified to diagnose his disease are of limited number. Dr. Elliott only suspected he had silicosis when he first examined him in October, 1948. In my view, the earliest time Salyer might be charged with a distinct manifestation of the disease was when he twice voluntarily had himself examined in the summer of 1948, materially less than a year before he filed his claim. His testimony was that the first time he had any idea he had silicosis was when Dr. Elliott examined him in October, 1948, after he began to smother and had to quit work on the night of October 13.
On the facts shown in the record, I think Salyer is entitled to have the $5.93 a week allowed him by Commissioner Martin.