Court Opinion

ID: 9741037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:48:19.177046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:21.805984
License: Public Domain

Otis, Justice
(dissenting).
The issue here is not whether the employee’s back symptoms returned to the level of severity of the preceding 8 months after working in Texas in May 1972. The issue is whether or not liability for compensation benefits should be imposed entirely on *58the first employer when the undisputed evidence discloses that each employer was responsible for 50 percent of the employee’s disability. The compensation judge so found. The doctors for both the employer and the employee were in agreement that each employer was equally responsible. There was no medical evidence to support the contrary conclusion by the compensation commission. The employee, however, chose not to proceed against his Texas employer.
The commission’s decision imposing all .of the liability on the first employer, based on their finding that the first injury was the sole cause of the disability, was rendered on April 23, 1974. In the accompanying opinion, they indicated that, even assuming there had been a second injury, the first injury “played at least a 50% material and inseparable liability factor in the resultant surgery” and that would be no apportionment under those circumstances.
Subsequently, however, we decided Pearson v. Foot Transfer Co. 301 Minn. 489, 491, 221 N. W. 2d 710, 711 (1974), where we reached the opposite conclusion and held that “on no theory can the first employer be held liable for total disability if half of it was caused by a later accident.”
I would direct that the commission reinstate the compensation judge’s finding that each injury contributed 50 percent to the disability and would order apportionment in accordance with Pearson v. Foot Transfer Co. supra.