Court Opinion

ID: 9696232
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:41:36.913879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:19.791575
License: Public Domain

Spencer, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I cannot be a party to a decision which penalizes determination and extreme effort to be self-supporting despite the physical infirmities set out in the majority opinion, which to me constitute permanent disability. In the present day and age, most employees sustaining the plaintiff’s disabilities would not attempt to do any type of work and would clearly be found totally disabled.
We have repeatedly held that total disability dees not mean a state of absolute helplessness but rather it means the disablement of the employee to earn wages in the same kind of or similar work for which he was trained.
At the time of his injury plaintiff, a partial paraplegic, had worked at and was able to perform a specialty called pin striping; to do heavy common labor; to tie steel as a steel worker; work as a carpenter’s helper; to operate heavy equipment; to act as a rodman; and to do any type of labor requiring walking, lifting, or bending. As the majority opinion states:, he can no longer do any of these tasks. Since his injury he has ■tried electrical wiring and painting but is physically unable to perform the tasks that work requires. At the time of the trial he was employed as a spot welder of switch breaker boxes, but due to his physical handicaps was paid less than- others doing the same work. He is unable to do lifting of any nature, and is only able to weld work brought to him. While he cannot perform several of the tasks required in his job, probably because of his intense desire to be a useful citizen his present employer has worked out these problems for him, but *325most employers would consider him unemployable.
Plaintiff retains a measure of earning capacity solely because of his determination to overcome extreme disabilities. Clearly, plaintiff has sustained a loss of earning capacity equivalent to or greater than that sustained by the claimant in Haler v. Gering Bean Co., 163 Neb. 748, 81 N. W. 2d 152; Nordahl v. Erickson, 174 Neb. 204, 116 N. W. 2d 275; Mead v. Missouri Valley Grain, Inc., 178 Neb. 553, 134 N. W. 2d 243; and Brockhaus v. L. E. Ball Construction Co., 180 Neb. 737, 145 N. W. 2d 341, where we found permanent total disability. For all intents and purposes he is totally disabled. The majority opinion certainly thwarts the beneficent purposes of the Nebraska Workmien’sCompensation Act by a highly technical refinement of interpretation.
White, C. J., and McCown, J., join in this dissent.