Court Opinion

ID: 9572320
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:40:50.233369+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:26.114410
License: Public Domain

Robert W. Hansen, J.
(concurring). The up-to-now test in Wisconsin as to required evidentiary support for department findings of fact in workmen’s compensation cases has been the Wigmore test, adopted in 1935,1 somewhat altered in 1953,2 that, as stated by Wigmore, asked:
“Are there facts in evidence which if unanswered would justify men of ordinary reason and fairness in affirming the question which the plaintiff is bound to maintain ?” 3
The from-now-on test, as stated in the majority opinion, is to be:
“If there is credible, relevant, and probative evidence and that evidence construed most favorably would justify men of ordinary reason and fairness to make that finding, the evidence is sufficient.”
This restatement of the test of supportive evidence for agency findings does not, as I see it, enlarge or narrow the scope of judicial review. It substitutes “evidence construed most favorably” for the Wigmore language, “evidence which if unanswered.” This may clarify, but *552it does not appear to change the measuring stick to be used. Both versions leave with the agency as the trier of fact all issues of credibility. Both incorporate the “men of ordinary reason and fairness” standard. Both have the same essential elements. So the standard set by the new test seems no higher and no lower than that required by the Wigmore rule.
Both phrasings put flesh on the bare bones of the “. . . supported by evidence” 4 standard of review. In interpreting this exact phrase the United States Supreme Court added the requirement that the evidence must be enough to justify, if the trial were to a jury, a refusal to direct a verdict, stating:
“This Court read ‘evidence’ to mean ‘substantial evidence,’ (case cited) and we said that ‘ [s] ubstantial evidence is more than a mere scintilla. It means such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.’ (case cited) ... it must be enough to justify, if the trial were to a jury, a refusal to direct a verdict when the conclusion sought to be drawn from it is one of fact for the jury.” (Emphasis supplied.) 5
The analogy suggested between reviewing a finding of fact of an administrative agency and reviewing a refusal to direct a verdict at law (where lack of substantial evidence is the test of the right to a directed verdict) makes good sense. In fact, the Wigmore test came from the section of his text dealing with what amount of evidence was required to get a case to the jury in a common-law action. The writer would accept and state the analogy between agency and jury. However, it is not to such analogy that this concurring opinion is addressed. Rather it is the Universal Camera holding that *553“evidence” is to be read to mean “substantial evidence” in applying a “. . . supported by evidence” requirement.
For if, as Universal Camera holds, “. . . supported by evidence” means supported by “. . . substantial evidence,” there is no basis for the reference in the majority opinion to there being a different standard for review in Wisconsin for workmen’s compensation cases than for other types of review. There then would be no reason for stating that the paraphrased test as to sufficiency of evidentiary support was “. . . proper under the Workmen’s Compensation Act,” but “. . . not by this opinion made generally applicable.” Nor would there be reason to distinguish the Motor Transport Co. Case as involving “. . . a proceeding that was governed by ch. 227, Uniform Administrative Procedure Act, in which the test is not ‘any credible evidence’ but ‘substantial evidence in view of the entire record.’ ” 6
It is true that workmen’s compensation and unemployment cases were specifically not included when the Uniform Administrative Procedures Act was adopted in Wisconsin, providing that administrative findings are reversible if “. . . unsupported by substantial evidence in view of the entire record as submitted.” 7
However, unless the reasoning of the Universal Camera Case is repudiated or its result ignored, the adoption of the Uniform Procedures Act in Wisconsin did not add “substantial” to the quantum of evidence required to sustain an agency finding of fact. It merely spelled out a requirement that was already there. The amendment clarified, but did not enlarge the scope of judicial review. With or without a uniform act it was the fact *554that “men of ordinary reason and fairness” would not find unsubstantial evidence a foundation strong or firm enough to support much of a superstructure.
This was the exact question of statutory interpretation that came before the United States Supreme Court in the Universal Camera Co. Case. There, as noted above, the original Wagner Act had provided that findings by the labor board “. . . supported by evidence, shall be conclusive.” 8 Subsequently, Congress adopted the test of the Uniform Administrative Procedures Act, to wit: that board findings were conclusive if “. . . supported by substantial evidence on the record considered as a whole.” 9 Did the adoption of this amendment from the Uniform Administrative Procedures Act broaden the scope of judicial review? Had it changed the test as to required evidentiary support for board rulings ? No, not at all, the nation’s high court ruled. Congress had only “. . . made it clear that a reviewing court is not barred from setting aside a Board decision when it cannot conscientiously find that the evidence supporting that decision is substantial, when viewed in the light that the record in its entirety furnishes, including the body of evidence opposed to the Board’s view.” 10
The writer would follow the reasoning and result of the Universal Camera Co. Case to hold that the “. . . supported by evidence” test means supported by “. . . evidence that is substantial evidence in view of the entire record as submitted.” To do so is to do no more than submit that the “men of ordinary reason and fairness” standard is not met if a finding based on “. . . (unsubstantial evidence in view of (less than) the entire record as submitted” is upheld. The difference goes beyond semantics to an insistence that Wisconsin has *555a single standard of review on all appeals to the court of administrative agency rulings. It is granted that the Workmen’s Compensation and Unemployment Compensation Acts are to be liberally construed to accomplish the beneficent purposes of such legislation, but that fact does not require nor justify upholding awards or denials of awards that are not based on substantial evidence in view of the entire record.
In the role of prophet, not critic, the writer suggests that the distinction noted by the majority will itself become unsubstantial and that, to be upheld on judicial review, all findings of fact by all administrative agencies in this state in all categories of cases, workmen’s compensation included, will have to meet the single requirement that they be supported by “. . . substantial evidence in view of the entire record as submitted” with the test of substantiality henceforth to be:
“Is there credible, relevant and probative evidence which construed most favorably would justify men of ordinary reason and fairness to make the finding of fact involved?”
The writer would hold that the findings of fact and inferences based thereon that are here challenged are supported, in view of the entire record as submitted, by substantial evidence, and would affirm.

 “The test suggested by Mr. Wigmore is perhaps as good as any that can be suggested.” Hills Dry Goods Co. v. Industrial Comm. (1935), 217 Wis. 76, 83, 258 N. W. 336.

 “ ‘Unexplained’ would seem to be a more accurate expression than ‘unanswered.’ ” Motor Transport Co. v. Public Service Comm. (1953), 263 Wis. 31, 46, 56 N. W. 2d 548.

 5 Wigmore, Evidence, (2d ed.), sec. 2494, p. 459, now 9 Wig-more, Evidence, (3d ed.), sec. 2494, p. 299.

 The original Wagner Act provided that findings of the National Labor Relations Board if “. . . supported by evidence, shall be conclusive.” Act of July 5, 1935, sec. 10 (e), 49 Stat. 449, 454.

 Universal Camera Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board (1951), 340 U. S. 474, 71 Sup. Ct. 456, 95 L. Ed. 456.

 Comparing the . . not supported by evidence” test in -workmen’s compensation cases with the . . unsupported by substantial evidence in view of the entire record as submitted” test in types of appeals, in Motor Transport Co. v. Public Service Comm., supra, footnote 2, pp. 43, 44, this court concluded . . there would appear to be little, if any, distinction in effect between them.”

 Sec. 227.20 (1) (d), Stats.

 Supra, footnote 4.

 61 Stat. 148, 29 U. S. C. (1946 Supp. Ill) see. 160 (e).

 Universal Camera Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, supra, footnote 5, page 488.