Court Opinion

ID: 9855333
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:22:56.660079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:25:40.177553
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE CASTLES
delivered the Opinion of the Court.
This is an appeal from a judgment in an Industrial Accident *467case. The district court heard the matter on appeal from a denial of a claim by the Industrial Accident Board. The district court reversed the Industrial Accident Board and made findings of fact and conclusions of law.
The claimant was employed by Y. K. Y. Lumber Company as a lumber stacker. The alleged injury occurred on March 28, 1963, as the claimant bent over to pick up a block of wood weighing ten or fifteen pounds, and in bending over felt a pain in his back. The claimant finished the work shift; he could hardly get out of bed the next morning, and went to see a doctor. He continued to work until April 1. He continued to go to a doctor. Examination revealed no serious type of back injury. It was diagnosed as “lumbosacral strain.”
Claimant worked during part of April and was able to return to work May 13, 1963.
On May 20, 1963, he filed a claim for benefits. His claim was denied on the ground he had not suffered an “industrial accident.”
A hearing was held at White Sulphur Springs on July 16, 1963. On August 12, 1963, the Board made findings of fact and conclusions of law and made an order denying the claim. Petition for rehearing was denied. The claimant appealed to the district court.
At the hearing on the appeal, the court desired further testimony. Written interrogatories were answered by claimant in Dawson, Illinois, but before they were signed the claimant died.
On February 26, 1964, the district court made findings, reversing the Board, allowing the claim and returned the claim to the Board for further administration as may be necessary. This appeal followed.
The problem presented is whether under B.C.M.1947, § 92-418, an industrial accident was shown.
The Industrial Accident Board found as a fact that “at no time was there any tangible happening of a traumatic nature *468from an unexpected cause resulting in injury to the claimant.” The district court made no finding contrary to the Board’s finding but did find: “That while so engaged, claimant bent over to pick up a block of wood weighing ten or fifteen pounds and in bending and picking up the block felt a pain and a snapping in his back.”
The claimant was doing his regular work, the same work he had been doing for a year. His regular work required him to turn and pick up blocks.
There is no evidence of any external force.
B.C.M.1947, § 92-418, defines injury as follows:
“Injury or injured defined. ‘Injury’ or ‘injured’ means a tangible happening of a traumatic nature from an unexpected cause, resulting in either external or internal physical harm, and such physical condition as a result therefrom and excluding disease not traceable to injury.”
In Lupien v. Montana Record Publishing Co., 143 Mont. 415, 418, et seq., 390 P.2d 455, 457, we discussed the effect of the 1961 amendment to the law redefining “injury.” We compared the new and the old definition and said:
“As pointed out, the old phrase ‘fortuitous event’ included either (1) an unexpected cause or, (2) an unexpected result, whereas the new phrase is limited to a ‘tangible happening of a traumatic nature from an unexpected cause.’
“The foregoing is not a play on words; rather, the distinction is the very heart of the problem as exhibited by our previous cases.”
Probably to best analyze the problem, a quotation from respondent’s brief will aid. There it is said in discussing the Lupien case: “As this court noted in the Lupien case there had been no tangible happening from an unexpected cause. In this cause the tangible happening, the lumbosacral strain from the unexpected cause, lifting a fifteen pound block, occurred * *
As seen, respondent-claimant asserts the lifting of a fifteen *469pound block as the unexpected cause. This, of course, is not so. Lifting the fifteen pound block was expected and done routinely and expected of him. As said in the Lupien case, supra, 143 Mont, at 419, 390 P.2d at 458:
“Even so, accepting the district court’s version of the record, the ‘tangible happening of a traumatic nature from an unexpected cause’ was not present. Everything done by Lupien was expected of him and by him. It was his work to do just as he was doing and in varying degrees just as he had been doing for some twenty-seven years.”
It appears then that the conclusion must be the same as in the Lupien case. There simply was no “tangible happening of a traumatic nature from an unexpected cause.”
Since our decision in the Lupien case, the Thirty-ninth Legislative Assembly has met. We note that at least three bills were introduced in the Senate, Senate Bills Nos. 94, 48 and 206, each of which had as their purpose a change in the definition of injury contained in section 92-418. Senate Bill No. 94, as introduced, would have changed the definition, but later was amended and enacted into law, re-enacting section 92-418 just as it was when the Lupien case was decided; Senate Bill No. 48 and Senate Bill No. 206 would have redefined injury; Senate Bill No. 206 would have included “strains” in the definition. Both measures were killed. Thus, we have a legislative consideration of the very definition involved.
For the foregoing reasons the judgment of the district court is reversed.