Court Opinion

ID: 9858429
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:23:23.571575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:17.375243
License: Public Domain

*220Opinion on Petition to Rehear
Counsel for the employer has filed herein a very dignified and forceful petition to rehear.
It is argued that the Court overlooked the fact that the bills for medical treatment were sent by the doctor to the employee and were not sent to the employer or accepted by the employer, and, this being true, we erred in holding that the treatment by the company physician within a year from the time the suit was filed did not toll the statute, because, by these bills being sent to the employee and not the employer, it shows that this service was done on behalf of the employee rather than the employer.
The record without question shows that the doctor who treated this man within a year from the time suit was filed was the doctor of the employer. There is nothing in this record to show that he was the doctor of the employee. If the employer intended to cut off the medical services of their doctor to this employee, the record should show this, the doctor should be so informed, and it should be shown by the proof that the employee then went to this doctor on his own. We again reiterate, under such a factual situation, as we said in the last paragraph of our original opinion, to-wit:
“It seems clear to us that one furnishing these medical services recognizes liability and this is inconsistent with a denial of liability. It certainly amounts to the employer saying to the employee that liability is recognized and will be discharged or will be carried out by the employer without the technical requirement óf a suit being filed within the statutory period.’’
*221We tried in. tlie original opinion to differentiate this case from the case of Chandler v. Travelers Ins. Co., 212 Tenn. 199, 369 S.W.2d 390, and reached the conclusion, which to our mind is inescapable, that even though the hills have not been paid the. mere fact that the doctor did the treating within the year distinguishes this case from the Chandler case. For the same reasons as liability was fixed in the Chandler case it was fixed here for doing the work not for paying the hills; in other words, the doctor, as far as this record shows, was employed by the employer, not the employee, and regardless to whom the hills were sent, the employer would he liable for the payment of these hills.
There is likewise an effort on behalf of the petitioner to distinguish cases from Colorado and Oklahoma, cited in our original opinion, from the case at bar. We did not say that these cases had the identical factual situation as here, hut that the reasoning applied by the Supreme Courts of those states was applicable to the reasoning that should be applied on the factual situation of the instant case. Consequently, we think that they are very much in point and support the conclusion which we have reached.
Much of the petition to rehear is merely reargument of what was so ably presented in the original brief and at the bar of this Court. We are sorry we can’t agree with that argument, but we are satisfied that the conclusion we reached in our original opinion is the correct conclusion.
For the reasons herein stated, the petition to rehear must be denied.