Court Opinion

ID: 9844975
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:12:56.276014+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:48.623247
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE DAVIS:
I dissent. Two questions were argued in the district court and here, viz.,
(1) May the claimant recover in this case without an affirmative showing (a) of notice given as required by R. C. M. 1947, section 92-807, i. e., in writing, “within thirty days after the occurrence of the accident which is claimed to have caused the injury,” or (b) of actual knowledge by the employer, his managing agent or superintendent of the accident and injury relied upon ?
(2) Was the accident of December 17, 1948, a contributing proximate cause of the claimant’s disability for which he may have compensation under the Act?
Before the Board the second only of these questions was considered. Judge Lessley, however, upon his review of the case expressly found (1) that notice of any kind was not given until February 9, 1949, (2) that no written notice “was served on appellant’s employer or on the Industrial Accident Board [the insurer] by appellant, or on his behalf, within thirty days after the occurrence of the accident,” and (3) that the employer had no actual knowledge of the accident or injury.
In answer to the second of these questions both Judge Lessley and the Board agreed that the accident of December 17, 1948, was not a contributing proximate cause of Gaffney’s present disability, and that accordingly he was not entitled to recover on his claim here.
I agree with the district court and the Board in the conclu*408sions which, they have reached. Consequently I would affirm their dismissal of this claim.
In explanation of my position I am sure no purpose will be served by a detailed summary of the evidence before the Board. It is enough for me to note that the additional evidence taken in the district court was stipulated by counsel on the oral argument of the cause here to be immaterial for any purpose on this appeal insofar as that evidence was not to be found in this record. Such evidence as the district court did hear in addition to that before the Board, and as that evidence appears in this record, is in my opinion wholly immaterial, and did not in any way alter the case' for the claimant, which the Board ruled against him.
In these circumstances by my dissents in Levo v. General-Shea-Morrison and Liberty National Ins. Co., 128 Mont. 570, 280 Pac. (2d) 1086, 12 St. Rep. 77, and Rathbun v. Taber Tank Lines, Inc., and Liberty National Ins. Co., 129 Mont., 121, 283 Pac. (2d) 966, 12 St. Rep. 128, I have given at length my view of the function which this court performs when under the Workmen’s Compensation Act of this state it applies the provisions of that statute liberally in accordance with R. C. M. 1947, section 92-838.
Accordingly I shall not repeat myself in these paragraphs further than to write that the evidence fully sustains the findings made below, specifically to the point that the claimant ignored R. C. M. 1947, section 92-807, and that neither notice nor knowledge of the accident of December 17, 1948, which it is argued caused or aggravated Gaffney’s present disability, came to either the employer or the insurer until February 9, 1949, at the earliest. Here we are faced with no inquiry where the preponderance of the evidence lies, nor whether the findings made by the district court are supported by substantial evidence. For the evidence before us is all one way, i. e., in support of these findings by Judge Lessley.
The burden of proof rests with Gaffney to show affirmatively in making out his claim that he has complied with section 92-*409807, supra. Maki v. Anaconda Copper Min. Co., 87 Mont. 314, 323, 324, 287 Pac. 170; Williams v. Anaconda Copper Min. Co., 96 Mont. 204, 207, 208, 29 Pac. (2d) 649; State ex rel. Magelo v. Industrial Accident Board, 102 Mont. 455, 462, 463, 464, 59 Pac. (2d) 785; Tassone’s Case, 330 Mass. 545, 548, 116 N. E. (2d) 126; Goldstein v. Continental Baking Co., 28 N. J. Super. 55, 61, 100 A. (2d) 337; Korman v. Hygrade Food Products Corp., 131 N. J. L. 188, 189, 35 A. (2d) 690; Sanchez v. Bernalillo County, 57 N. M. 217, 222, 257 Pac. (2d) 909; Brown Shoe Co., Inc., v. Industrial Commission, 374 Ill. 500, 503, 504, 30 N. E. (2d) 4; Wheaton’s Case, 310 Mass. 504, 506, 38 N. E. (2d) 617; Clifton v. Chrysler Corporation, 287 Mich. 87, 92, 93, 282 N. W. 912; Whitfield v. Traders & General Ins. Co., Tex. Civ. App., 106 S. W. (2d) 359, 362.
But by no reading of this record as I see the case can evidence be found which satisfies the statutory requirement of written notice given the employer or the insurer within thirty days, or of actual knowledge by the "employer or his managing agent or superintendent in charge of the work,” the one or the other of which is a mandatory condition precedent to recovery by Gaffney. Maki v. Anaconda Copper Min. Co., supra; Williams v. Anaconda Copper Min. Co., supra; State ex rel. Magelo v. Industrial Accident Board, supra.
There is here no case which requires the construction liberal or otherwise of section 92-807, supra. There is before us, in short, no faint suggestion that the command of that statute has been met. Our problem is only to apply the plain language of the law, not to construe it. Chmielewska v. Butte & Superior Min. Co., 81 Mont. 36, 42, 43, 44, 261 Pac. 616; Sheridan County Electric Co-op., Inc., v. Montana-Dakota Utilities Co., 128 Mont. 84, 270 Pac. (2d) 742, 744, 11 St. Rep. 255; State ex. rel. Westlake v. District Court, 119 Mont. 222, 233, 234, 173 Pac. (2d) 896, 169 A. L. R. 827; State v. Holt, 121 Mont. 459, 481, 194 Pac. (2d) 651; Vaughn & Ragsdale Co., Inc., v. State Board of Equalization, 109 Mont. 52, 57, 58, 96 Pac. (2d) 420; Green v. City of Roundup, 117 Mont. 249, 252, 157 Pac. (2d) 1010; R. *410C. M. 1947, section 93-401-15. Applied this statute and these authorities mean that the claimant Gaffney may not recover-As I see it that is all there is to this ease.
It then becomes, I believe, our plain duty to affirm the judgment and order below within the rule of Birdwell v. Three Forks Portland Cement Co., 98 Mont. 483, 495, 40 Pac. (2d) 43; Tweedie v. Industrial Accident Board, 101 Mont. 256, 264, 265, 53 Pac. (2d) 1145; Wieri v. Anaconda Copper Min. Co., 116 Mont. 524, 531, 156 Pac. (2d) 838.
But upon the merits I reach the same conclusion if the case is to get that far. For I gather that between August 1946 and the date of the hearing before the Board on October 28, 1953, the claimant (1) on August 15, 1946, chipped his right elbow on a counter because his fingers slipped while pulling a staple “out of two pieces of paper”; (2) on November 29,1947, slipped and turned his left foot back and a toe under near the first step of the stairway leading to the clerk’s desk in the lobby of the Placer Hotel at Helena, Montana; (3) on March 1, 1948, slipped on an icy curb and fell while crossing a street in Denver, Colorado; (4) on December 17, 1948, slipped near the top of the stairway leading from the lobby in the Jordan Hotel at Glen-dive, Montana (the accident here in issue); (5) on July 6, 1949, slipped while stepping down to the sidewalk in Billings, Montana; and (6) on April 25, 1951, while driving his automobile near Yolberg, Montana, collided with a sheep on -the highway, and went off the road over a six-foot embankment and through a barbed wire fence into the adjoining field.
I need not set out in any greater detail the evidence upon which both the Board’s order and the district court’s judgment of dismissal stand, i. e., to show the solid factual basis for both. I shall, however, summarize the effect of that evidence, as I read it, in one sentence. The conclusion therefrom is irresistible that Parkinson’s Disease was itself the cause of the accidents the claimant admits, including that which is the foundation of this claim; and that the fall of December 17, 1948, neither caused nor aggravated that disease with which admittedly Gaffney is *411.afflicted. To the contrary of this conclusion I find nothing at all.
Dr. Schiewe, a medical witness for Gaffney, actually says as much. For he testified flatly, “I feel that I honestly cannot relate the fall [of December 17, 1948] to his present 100 % disability. ’ ’ At best in giving his testimony designed to relate the claimant’s disability to this fall this expert witness could only answer, “It would be possible,” or “Possibly,” or “It’s possible”, seven or more times in the space of fourteen typewritten pages of evidence given and reported in question and answer form.
It is doubtful indeed that testimony of this kind will support a finding in Gaffney’s favor. Susnik v. Oliver Iron Min. Co., 205 Minn. 325, 331, 286 N. W. 249; Owings v. Industrial Accident Comm., 31 Cal. (2d) 689, 692, 192 Pac. (2d) 1; Rust Engineering Co. v. Ramsey, 194 Va. 975, 979, 980, 76 S. E. (2d) 195. It is doubtful also that the claimant has sustained even the burden of proof which is with him of making out prima facie that the accident of December 17, 1948, was in some part a proximate cause of his presently existing disability. Nicholson v. Roundup Coal Min. Co., 79 Mont. 358, 374, 375, 257 Pac. 270. But on this record I need not reach or answer these questions.
It is enough, as 1 see the case, that the findings below upon which the denial of Gaffney’s claim stands are abundantly supported by substantial evidence, that there is nothing in this record which contradicts the presumption the Board decided the case correctly, Moffett v. Bozeman Canning Co., 95 Mont. 347, 350, 351, 26 Pac. (2d) 973, and that the preponderance of the evidence is clearly with, not against, that decision and as well the judgment of the lower court which affirmed that decision. Moffett v. Bozeman Canning Co., supra, stressed by the majority, if applied to this record, eliminates altogether the testimony of Dr. Schiewe and the other medical authorities who appeared before the Board, leaving the claimant Gaffney not even a surmise upon which to stand and no circumstantial evidence at all to which to turn within the rule of that authority.