Court Opinion

ID: 9524791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:57:16.39044+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:11:57.232639
License: Public Domain

OTIS, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority opinion holds that the findings of the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals are not manifestly contrary to the evidence, and therefore, affirms the award of dependency compensation to the decedent employee’s widow. I do not agree.
*548Minn.Stat. § 176.021, subd. 1 (1980), provides:
Except as excluded by this chapter all employers and employees are subject to the provisions of this chapter. Every such employer is liable * * * to pay compensation in every case of personal injury or death of his employee arising out of and in the course of employment without regard to the question of negligence, unless the injury was intentionally self-inflicted or when the intoxication of the employee is the proximate cause of the injury. The burden of proof of such facts is upon the employer.
The evidence is uncontroverted that the decedent at the time of his death was intoxicated and by our legal standards was a drunk driver. Before he died he admitted to consuming “too much beer.” Nevertheless the court of appeals found his intoxication was not the proximate cause of the accident which killed him. Under our statute, Minn.Stat. § 169.121, (l)(d) (1980), a person is presumed to be intoxicated if there is a .10 alcohol concentration in his blood while operating a motor vehicle.
In the instant case, the concentration of alcohol in the decedent's blood, when tested at the hospital at 12:30 a. m., was .12. The accident, however, had occurred over two and one-half hours earlier, at 9:50 p. m. At that time, the alcohol concentration was .16 according to the conservative estimate of a chemist for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension who testified that the decedent must have consumed at least ten 3.2 beers, plus one more beer for each of the hours he had been drinking, in all something in excess of thirteen beers, before the decedent began to load and operate his truck.
He stacked twelve full kegs on top of each other on the right side of the truck. A friend’s suggestion that he distribute the weight more evenly was disregarded, though the truck was unbalanced with the load so arranged.
The majority opinion of the Workers’ Compensation Court concedes that, owing to the distribution of the load, the truck may have been top-heavy, but implies that the imbalance was an intervening cause, overlooking the fact that the problem was of decedent’s own making at a time when he was intoxicated.
In the moments immediately prior to the crash while in a 55-mile-an-hour zone, decedent accelerated to 65 miles an hour to pass another vehicle, apparently misjudged his clearance on the left, and lost control of the truck. He veered to the left lane, across a gravel shoulder and into the ditch, continuing for a distance of 454 feet. During none of that time did he apply his brakes. Instead, he steered the vehicle out of the ditch, back over the gravel shoulder, across the left lane, back into the right lane, over the right hand shoulder into that ditch, and after travelling 232 feet collided with the embankment of a cross-road where the truck turned over and exploded. All this with no attempt to apply his brakes.
In the light of this undisputed testimony, to find that decedent’s intoxication was not a proximate cause of either the faulty loading or erratic operation of the truck is tantamount to holding the injuries self inflicted by an employee’s voluntary intoxication are now wholly compensable. I cannot subscribe to a rule which so unjustifiably and effectively nullifies the effect of Minn. Stat. § 176.021, subd. 1 (1980).