Court Opinion

ID: 9662485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:10:39.576831+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:39.988071
License: Public Domain

Kelly, Justice
(dissenting).
I would favor reversing the decision of the commission but would remand this case to the commission for further proceedings.
The memorandum of Commissioner Pomush states that there was a “certain amount of aggravation” of this employee’s preexisting condition. That memorandum also points out that she did “some degree of heavy work,” that any work of substance would create aggravation, that the history revealed her inability at that time to be other than sedentary. While he concluded that the commission could not state that the employee suffered a personal injury which aggravated a preexisting condition, this conclusion does not square with his statement that there was an aggravation. The aggravation itself was of course a personal injury. While it may seem fundamentally unfair to saddle an employer with an aggravation to a preexisting condition where that condition was such that the employee could not do any work of substance and was unable “to be other than sedentary,” the law does permit a recovery for such an aggravation. However, if the commission did not believe this employee’s testimony, and there is some intimation of that in Commissioner Pomush’s memorandum, then we should possibly affirm. In this case the symptoms complained of by the employee were the same as those sustained previously in an automobile accident. If the symptoms from that accident in reality had not subsided and in fact the symptoms claimed in this case were merely a continuation of the old symptoms, obviously the commission decision is a correct one. This is essentially finding IV by the commission! The memorandum of Commissioner Pomush in referring to the symptoms caused by the auto accident stated— “* * * [I]t is difficult to believe that all of these difficulties completely vanished on March 6, 1972, the date of the settlement and her remarriage.” The *524memorandum also pointed out that the employee, in doing her work, “noted no immediate untoward event.”
The problem in this case is that we do not know whether the commission erred by concluding that although there was an aggravation, it was not a personal injury caused by her work; or whether it concluded that in reality there was no aggravation but the symptoms related to her nonemployment auto accident.
Both the compensation judge and the commission indicate by their memoranda that this is a close case. The compensation judge stated:
“Considering the employee’s previous complaints after the automobile accident in 1968, it is difficult to determine the extent of the aggravation to the spine of August 29, 1972. It is also difficult to believe that the pain and discomfort complained of for 4 years left completely [in] March 1972.”
I would remand the case for further proceedings by the commission that would clarify the seeming inconsistencies between finding IV by the commission and the statement in the memorandum that there was an aggravation but no personal injury during her employment.
Mr. Justice Knutson took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.