Court Opinion

ID: 9624329
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:58:30.347406+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:44:46.151513
License: Public Domain

CARMODY, Justice (dissenting). Although I have no desire to belabor the questions here involved, I must express my disagreement with the opinion of the majority. In both Baker v. Shufflebarger and Webb v. Hamilton, cited by the majority, there was substantial evidence that there was “additional body impairment” justifying a determination that recovery should not be limited to the scheduled-injury section of the statute (§ 59-10-18.4, N.M.S.A.1953, 1967 Pocket Supp.). Here, the majority to the contrary notwithstanding, I do not believe that the evidence is substantial. The majority rely entirely on the testimony of the treating physician, who admittedly had discharged the claimant from any further treatment almost two years before the trial. The discharge was on a basis of 20% permanent disability and the doctor had not treated the patient for any related condition since the time of discharge. As a matter of fact, he had seen, him only once since discharge, and then for a cold. Prior to the discharge of the claimant, the doctor did not even consider “any trouble * * * with his left hip or left buttock.. That has developed since then.” The doctor further admitted that his disability evaluation was “not based upon any examination.” Without in any sense attempting to weigh the testimony of this professional man, nevertheless, under the facts here, I do not believe that, in all fairness, the testimony can be considered substantial. It is at best a mere scintilla. In my judgment, it is neither sufficient to support finding No. 5, nor can it serve as justification to overturn the trial court’s limitation of 20% disability to the body as a whole. In no sense can the testimony be construed to be the kind of expert testimony required to establish the “causal connection as a medical probability” of 100% disability as the natural and direct result of the accident. At the most, it is speculation and contrary to § 59-10-13.3(B), N.M.S.A.1953. See, Ross v. Sayers Well Servicing Co., 1966, 76 N.M. 321, 414 P.2d 679, which, in my opinion, would require that the expert testimony be considered of no value, directly opposite to the result reached by the majority. What little “breath of life” yet remained in the scheduled-injury section after the decisions in Baker and Webb has now been effectively and conclusively “snuffed out” by the majority opinion. Without weighing the merits or demerits of the existence of a scheduled-injury section of the Workmen’s Compensation Law, I cannot accede to what amounts to an effective repeal of the statute by what, to me, is a tortured construction of testimony, which, taken in its proper context, would be of little, if any, probative value. If the statute is to be repealed, it should be done by proper action of the legislature, not by an opinion of the court which gives body and substance to testimony which otherwise would be entitled to little credence. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.