Court Opinion

ID: 9577889
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:39:10.584033+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:25.544356
License: Public Domain

Smith, Justice,
dissenting.
Man has not yet and almost certainly never will be able to duplicate human organs to the point where the person suffering an injury to one of his organs will be made whole after replacement.
Mr. Swann had no need for corrective lenses prior to the work related injury which left him industrially blind in one eye. The surgery did not make him whole. The surgery only provided a lens that assists him in being able to see. The lens that was implanted is supposed to be a permanent lens. But what if it is not? What is the real status of his eye? He is blind in that eye.
I venture to say that there is no member of this court who would swap his natural eye for a transplant and a pair of eyeglasses and believe that he had been made whole.
I am reminded of a 16-year-old boy I represented before a jury in Grady County. He was struck by an automobile. He suffered among other things a broken leg. A doctor took the stand and testified for the defendant in the case that the boy’s leg had healed and healed well. He testified that the bone was stronger than ever and that the place where the break occurred was the strongest place in the boy’s body. The jury was not sympathetic to my client. Within a month the boy fell from a porch on the side of his house. The mended leg, the leg with the strongest bone in the boy’s body broke in the exact same spot as the original break.
Medical science has come a long way, but there is no way a doctor or anyone else can duplicate God’s work, and those who suffer losses should be compensated for the real loss.