Court Opinion

ID: 9773956
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:05:03.459125+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:59.994156
License: Public Domain

Opinion on Petition to Rehear
The employer has filed herein a very courteous, dignified and forceful petition to rehear. This petition *611is largely based on the propositions, to-wit: (1) that the trial conrt allowed recovery for a doctor’s hill, a hospital bill and two weeks’ benefit to the employee which occurred well within the statute of limitations and prior to the time that the trial court found that the injury herein became compensable; and (2) that the case of Pillsbury v. United Engineering Co., 342 U.S. 197, 72 S.Ct. 223, 96 L.Ed. 225, which construed the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, as dating from the time of the accident rather than the time of the injury, was controlling.
After carefully considering these questions, our conclusion is that first the question of the doctor’s bill and the hospital bill and the two weeks ’ compensation was not raised one way or the other in the trial court, nor was it before us in the original record. There was no objection in the trial court to the admission of these bills nor was the question for the allowance of these bills raised in the motion for a new trial and no assignment of error thereon was made to this Court. This being true, we naturally in working this record paid little heed to the date of said bills one way or the other, since as the matter was presented to us the only question involved was whether or not the one year statute of limitations applied as set forth in our original opinion.
These three items are now presented in a forceful argument on the factual situation that since they antedate the beginning of the year of the statute of limitations thus it must be determined that the accidental injury happened more than a year before the filing of the petition herein. We do not think these items are controlling especially due to the fact that there was no objection made to them when they were presented to the trial court and no question raised about them. Our determination of *612this case was solely on the basis that a compensable claim dates from the time of the injury and not from the time of the accident as is fully discussed and set forth in our original opinion. Again the case of Travelers Insurance Co. v. Jackson, 206 Tenn. 272, 332 S.W.2d 674, is pressed as being authority against our conclusion in our original opinion, but by a careful re-reading of the Jackson opinion it will be found that the sole question determined in that case is determined exactly as we have determined this case, the Court therein saying:
“It appears that the applicable rule in all Workmen’s Compensation cases is that the determinative starting point for the running of the statute is the occurrence of the injury rather than the happening of the accident. ’ ’
Then the opinion is largely made up of quotations from Pittman v. City Stores, Inc., 204 Tenn. 650, 325 S.W.2d 249, which factually differs entirely from the facts of this case. Thus it is as we read the Jackson opinion the same legal proposition is determined in the same way as is, and was, determined by the original opinion in this case.
The Pillsbury case, as said above, is a construction by the Supreme Court of the United States of the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act and is based on a determination by that Court of the construction of the Longshoremen’s Act to the effect that the statutory limitations period runs from the time of the accident and not from the time of the injury as we construe our Act in this State, and is construed by a great majority of the Slates as shown in our original opinion.
After a careful consideration of this petition to rehear, it must be overruled.