Court Opinion

ID: 9854220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:03:26.516694+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:58.883494
License: Public Domain

Judge Martin (Robert M.),
dissenting:
I dissent from the opinion of the majority because I believe that the amendment to G.S. 97-25,1973 Sess. Laws, c. 520, s. 1, is applicable here and requires that the case be remanded to the Commission for further findings of fact. In its recent decision in Schofield v. Tea Co., 299 N.C. 582, 264 S.E. 2d 56 (1980), the Supreme Court applied the 1973 amendment to G.S. 97-25 retroactively in a case in which the claim arose, as did the present case, out of an accident occurring prior to the effective date of the amendment. The statute, in its present form and as applied in Schofield, provides in part that the employer shall furnish:
*8[m]edical, surgical, hospital, nursing services, medicines, sick travel, rehabilitation services, and other treatment including medical and surgical supplies as may reasonably be required to effect a cure or give relief and for such additional time as in the judgment of the Commission will tend to lessen the period of disability ....
In enacting 1973 Sess. Law, c. 520, s. 1, therefore, the legislature intended to eliminate the ten-week limitation on treatments which are necessary “to effect a cure or give relief.” Thus, as I interpret the statute, an award by the Commission requiring the furnishing of medical treatment as provided in amended G.S. 97-25 may be based upon any one of three alternative findings specified in the statute, that is, that such treatment is reasonably required (1) to effect a cure, (2) to give relief, or (3) if additional time is required, to lessen the period of disability.
It is clear upon the record in the present case that the continuing medical treatment which plaintiff will require throughout his life as a result of the terrible permanent injuries which he received in his accident will never “effect a cure,” or “lessen the period of [his] disability.” Thus, neither the first nor the third finding required by G.S. 97-25 as a prerequisite to the award of medical expenses could be made in the present case. There is, however, abundant evidence in the record that continuing medical treatment and provision of supplies will be necessary to maintain this plaintiff at his present, however poor, level of health, evidence which in my view would amply support a finding by the Commission that such treatment is reasonably required to “give relief.” Upon such a finding, an award requiring the employer to provide the cost of the treatment could be based.
It is undisputed here that plaintiff suffered an injury by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. He should, therefore, be entitled to compensation to the full extent allowed by a liberal interpretation of our Workers’ Compensation Act. As the policy of the Act was stated by Justice Seawell in Barber v. Minges, 223 N.C. 213, 25 S.E. 2d 837, (1943):
*9The primary purpose of legislation of this kind is to compel industry to take care of its own wreckage. It is said to be acceptable to both employer and employee, because it reduces the cost of settlement and avoids delay. To the employee, it means a certainty of some sort of compensation for an injury received in the course of business; and to the employer, it reduces unpredictability of loss and puts it on an actuarial basis, permitting it to be treated as “overhead,” absorbed in the sales price, and thus transferred to that universal beast of economic burden, the consumer. Allen v. State, 160 N.Y. Supp., 85; Village of Kiel v. Industrial Commission (Wis.), 158 N.W., 68. It is said to be humanitarian and economical as opposed to wasteful in the conduct of the enterprise, and is referred to the propriety of keeping loss by accident incidental to employment chargeable to the industry where it occurs. Kennerson v. Thomas Towboat Co., 89 Conn., 367, 94 A., 372. It is called “an economic system of trade risk.” Losses incidental to industrial pursuits are like wrongs and breakage of machinery — a cost of production.” Mackin v. Detroit-Limken Axle Co., 187 Mich., 8, 153 N.W., 49; Village of Kiel v. Industrial Commission, supra. It should be charged against the industry responsible for the injury. Klawinski v. Lake Shore and N.S. Ry. Co., 185 Mich., 643, 152 N.W., 213; Schneider, Workmen’s Compensation Law, Permanent Edition, s. 1.
223 N.C. at 216-217, 25 S.E. 2d at 839.
Although the above-quoted language refers specifically to private industry and its employees, the policy expressed therein should be equally applicable where, as here, a State employee is involved. It is only just that, where the language of G.S. 97-25 permits payment for treatment of an injured State employee, the taxpayers of this State should ultimately bear the cost of medical treatment necessitated by an accident incidental to that employment where that treatment will “give relief.”
Because the Commission failed to make any findings of fact as to whether the medical treatment involved here is reasonably required to “give relief,” I would remand the case for further proceedings.