Court Opinion

ID: 9668561
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:18:01.971308+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:46.105041
License: Public Domain

Edwards, J.
(concurring). Plaintiff, suffered a stroke occasioned by a brain hemorrhage while seeking to chain a load of logs in place on his truck.
After hearing the incident and the effort concerned therewith related, plaintiff’s medical witness testified concerning “such physical exertion,” “It is my opinion that it can produce this hemorrhage.”' The workmen’s compensation appeal board found that his injury arose out of and during the course of his employment, and there is ample evidence from which such a finding could be made.
Plaintiff filed claim for compensation alleging disability, alternatively based on “personal injury” and “occupational disease.” The opinion of the appeal board granting compensation was likewise alternative :
“We find that plaintiff fastened a load binder requiring very great and strenuous effort immediately prior to falling in an unconscious state on February 17,1953. Plaintiff’s injury may have been caused by this single incident. Under all of the circumstances pertaining to plaintiff’s work and the injury sustained, it is our finding that it is immaterial whether the injury resulted from the regular course of strenuous and unusual exertion described herein or whether, while regularly engaged in such work, plaintiff was injured as the result of a single incident. In either event the injury is compensable in view of Michigan Supreme Court decisions covering each type of ease.
“There is clear authority for the proposition that where an employee is regularly performing unusual and very strenuous work but an injury is due to a particular or single event although no accident dr *656fortuitous circumstance is involved, the injury is compensable. Anderson v. General Motors Corporation, 313 Mich 630; Schinderle v. Ford Motor Company, 316 Mich 387. It is also true that a disability is compensable which results from regular and customary work of an unusual and strenuous nature although no accidental injury, fortuitous event or single incident is involved.”
This brain hemorrhage was not an ordinary disease of life. It resulted from the rupture of a small blood vessel (perhaps previously weakened) in the covering of the brain, due to hard physical exertion in the course of employment.
No proof of “accidental” injury is required under the statute as amended in 1943 and following, for the reasons cited in my opinion in Sheppard v. Michigan National Bank, 348 Mich 577.
Language of this Court in some previous cases* implying or holding that a requirement of proof of “accident” arises where there is evidence of a preexisting ailment or injury is hereby overruled for the reason that no such requirement may be found in the act and for the compelling additional reasoning ■on this question of Mr. Justice Smith’s opinion in Sheppard v. Michigan National Bank, supra, decided this date.
The injury and subsequent disability were related causally to a single event. The writer believes that recovery should be allowed under the factual situation related above under part 2 of the act.
The compensation award would be the same under part 2 as under part 7. For the reasons stated, I concur with Mr. Justice Black in affirming the award.

 Notably: Hagopian v. City of Highland Park, 313 Mich 608, 625 (and subsequent ease quotations therefrom) ; Arnold v. Ogle Construction Co., 333 Mich 652, 664; Nichols v. Central Crate & Box Co., 340 Mich 232, 234, 235; Croff v. Lakey Foundry & Machine Co., 320 Mich 581, 585; Wieda v. American Box Board Co., 343 Mich 182, 189; McGregor v. Conservation Department, 338 Mich 93, 101.