Court Opinion

ID: 9864815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:12:51.403155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:04.282108
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Bouck,
dissenting.
After a full hearing the Industrial Commission found the claimant Klipfel entitled to compensation for temporary disability caused by an industrial accident on August 5, 1931.
It also found — upon the uncontradicted evidence of the claimant and his physician — that no permanent disability had resulted. No petition for review was filed by either side and the commission’s order therefore became final under section 95 of the Workmen’s Compensation Act (C. L. 1921, sec. 4469, as amended by S. L. ’23, p. 755, sec. 4). Moreover, the compensation awarded was duly paid.
The claimant having sustained a second and wholly disconnected accident on November 3, 1931, the commission ordered a hearing thereon. The same employer was involved, but the insurance carrier had in the meantime been changed.
At the suggestion of the new insurance carrier the case involving the first accident was reopened. Not only so, *223but the tivo cases were then heard together. Incidentally it is to be noted that at the hearing in the first ease the second accident had already taken place and was directly mentioned by the witnesses. After the second hearing the commission entered in the first case a supplemental award for half the compensation granted for the permanent disability alleged to have been caused by both accidents combined. In the second case an award for a like half was entered.
I am unable to agree with the judgment and opinion of the court herein sustaining the foregoing procedure and approving the supplemental award thus entered in the first case. My reasons include the following:
1. The order in the first case having become a final adjudication between the parties upon a full and fair hearing, the reopening of that case could not be lawfully accomplished except under section 110 of the Workmen’s Compensation Act (C. L. 1921, sec. 4484). This section provides: “Upon its own motion on the ground of error, mistake or a change in conditions, the commission may at any time * * * review any award * * There is no evidence whatever in the record or files as to any “error, mistake or change in conditions” here, within any reasonable interpretation of the statute. At the second hearing the additional evidence on disability consisted of expert testimony by a physician who examined the claimant about a year after both accidents had occurred. He did not purport to know anything concerning these accidents except as a matter of professional opinion.
The facts appearing in, and the principle laid down by, the case of Independence Coffee and Spice Co. v. Taylor, 97 Colo. 242, 48 P. (2d) 798, may well give us pause ere we lightly set aside a final award duly paid in full. Expert evidence should not be allowed to change an honest award by mere opinion, except in extraordinary circumstances not here present. It is noteworthy that, when we have permitted reopenings by the commission to stand, *224the commission has perhaps without exception given notice of hearings to he held “to determine whether there had been any error or mistake in the previous award, or any change in the claimant’s condition.” Reynolds v. Fraker Co., 94 Colo. 84, 28 P. (2d) 338; Clayton Co. v. Zak, 94 Colo. 171, 29 P. (2d) 374; Sherratt v. Fuel Co., 94 Colo. 269, 30 P. (2d) 270. Compare Rocky Mt. Co. v. Sherratt, 96 Colo. 463, 45 P. (2d) 643. Such a notice was not given in the case at bar.
Mr. Justice Young’s opinion says: “We can conceive of no clearer case of mistake than one in which the commission makes a finding’ of no permanent injury and denies compensation, when in fact a permanent injury has been sustained which would entitle the claimant to compensation if the facts had been known, established and correctly acted upon.” This seems to imply the propriety of multiple hearings in all cases, with both sides racing to gather a little more evidence for the next retrial. It is readily seen that the broad doctrine so announced would invite a continually repeated reopening of cases, frequently at the instance of an endless procession of insurance carriers succeeding one another, attempting to avoid liability by throwing the burden upon their predecessors and thus gambling upon the chance of getting the commission to change its mind. The embarrassment and the danger attending such reopenings, especially when an independent industrial accident has intervened, as it has here, would result in perpetual uncertainty for employee, employer and insurer alike., the diametrical opposite of the simplicity intended by the Workmen’s Compensation Act. But here another complication added to the difficulties by providing a joint hearing on two disconnected accidents. As a general rule, all parties are entitled to a trial of their case to the exclusion of and apart from trials of legally separate cases involving other causes of action, whether similar or not.- It seems to me that the conditions here clearly demanded single, undiverted attention. Certainly the issue *225of “error,” or “mistake,” could have been better determined in a hearing not bound up with an entirely separate cause of action.
2. As for such “change in conditions” as will justify a reopening, this must necessarily be a change in the conditions resulting from the particular accident and not a change due, as here, entirely to a subsequent and independent accident. The latter is the case here, hence it is clear that “change” was not here involved. It is not even claimed here, according to the record before us. ■Great liberality should be shown in reopening whenever a change does occur in conditions created by the basic accident, where the change occurs without the intervention of an independent cause.
3. From what I have said it will properly be inferred that I dissent largely because of this court’s approval of what all must admit is a strangely anomalous, complex and confusing procedure. We have before us two separate claims, for which the same employer is liable to the full extent, but for each of which only one of the two insurance carriers can, under any known rule of legal liability, be liable. Yet this court approves the mingling of the two. I know of no accepted doctrine of liability which could at all reasonably justify the statement indulged in by the majority opinion herein: “It was not within the power of the employee to require the employer to insure in one company, nor was it within his power to prevent the employer from insuring in two companies; but it was within the power of the employer and the two insurance companies to provide, as they might deem advisable, against such a contingency as has here arisen. The commission, as a fact-finding body, has exercised its best judgment in assessing the payment of this award against the two companies equally, basing its judgment probably upon the question asked of Dr. Norman, ‘Would you charge this to either one of the accidents or would it be your opinion that the permanent disability should be divided between the two!’ and his answer in part: ‘I *226think it would he impossible to separate the disability as between the two accidents.’ ” Nowhere in the record before us is there, by any reasonable interpretation, any other evidential basis than this — which is no recognized basis at all — for the result achieved. Not even the wildest guess was made, by any witness, as to the ratio of the respective disabilities from the two independent accidents as a criterion for compensation liability of the individual insurance carrier. There has been, I fear, a palpable translation of the judicial process into the realm of unfounded speculation. To that I cannot give my assent.
4. The unsoundness of the decision seems to me best indicated by its own closing words, which include what strongly resembles argumentum ad hominem: ‘ ‘ The employer paid each of them to indemnify him against liability for accidental injury to this claimant. Presumably both insurers are financially responsible. Each has contracted to indemnify the employer for a portion of a disability caused by two accidents for which the employer is unquestionably liable. The rights of the employer and the two insurers inter se are not involved in this action other than collaterally. As between themselves we leave them to settle their problems as they may be advised. ’ ’
Would any attorney harbor a hope, on the strength of this pronouncement, to institute an action on behalf of the original insurance carrier for the “settling” of “problems” arising out of the “rights of the employer and the two insurers inter se?” When such an action comes to this court, will the judges who concur in the majority opinion stand by this declaration?
I respectfully submit that the judgment herein should have been reversed and the case remanded to the district court with instructions to send it back to the Industrial Commission, directing that body to dismiss it as to the plaintiff in error, inasmuch as the award entered against the other insurance carrier is shown by the record to have been settled by stipulation between itself and the *227claimant, without consulting the plaintiff in error carrier, which, as above indicated, was an involuntary party to the joint hearing purporting to deal with two separate accidents inextricably intermingled thereby. Only an unconditional dismissal of the proceedings could have done justice to the plaintiff in error in the actual state of the record.
Therefore I dissent from the majority opinion and from the denial of the petition for rehearing.