Court Opinion

ID: 9862319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 01:06:34.543698+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:25:02.044043
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE BARRY and JUSTICE WOODWARD dissenting: We respectfully dissent from the majority opinion. The majority treats this appeal as merely a determination of whether the Commission’s decision, was against the manifest weight of the evidence. We cannot agree. As the dissenting Commissioner and the circuit court noted, the Commission’s majority decision misapplied the law to the facts. When the law is correctly applied to the Commission’s factual findings, which came from the nearly uncontroverted evidence, it is clear that the petitioner proved his case. As noted by the majority, the arbitrator found that the petitioner had sustained accidental injuries arising out of and in the course of his employment. Specifically, she found that the petitioner’s back problems developed at work after he was required to work alone on an Aerostar press. That job consisted of bending over every minute and 45 seconds to pull six to eight pounds of material out of a box, cutting it, then bending over a 460°F, waist-high die without touching it and handing the cut material to the trimmer on the other side of the six-foot-wide die. Based on her finding, the arbitrator ruled that the petitioner was temporarily totally disabled from September 4, 1985, through February 18, 1986, the date of the arbitration hearing. On review before the Commission, the parties stipulated that as of April 10, 1986, the petitioner had returned to work and was engaged in his normal duties for the respondent. No further new evidence was presented. The Commission reversed the arbitrator’s decision, finding that the petitioner had failed to prove he sustained accidental injuries arising out of and in the course of his employment. The Commission expressly found that on August 19, 1985, the petitioner had not told Dr. Murphy that his back problems were work related. It further found that “Dr. Murphy suspected the work history of pulling of materials described by the Petitioner, aggravated the preexisting herniated disc, not caused it.” Additionally, it specifically noted that on the August 29 and September 12, 1985, medical insurance claim forms the petitioner filled out, he “did not claim a specific accident.” Commissioner Ted Black, Jr., dissented, contending that the majority had erred in basing its decision on the petitioner’s failure to categorize his injury as an accident and in ignoring the repetitive trauma law set forth in Peoria County Belwood Nursing Home v. Industrial Comm’n (1987), 115 Ill. 2d 524, 505 N.E.2d 1026. The circuit court found that the Commission’s majority decision was against the manifest weight of the evidence and that the dissenting Commissioner was correct. The court noted that the petitioner’s preexisting condition was undisputed, as was the evidence that the petitioner was asymptomatic until July of 1985, when the amount of pulling he was required to do on the job approximately doubled. The court found inappropriate the Commission’s consideration of the medical forms in which the petitioner had failed to refer to a specific accident. Regarding the petitioner’s being a time bomb, the court stated that an employer takes an employee as it finds him. It further found that the only medical evidence of causation was Dr. Murphy’s opinion that the repetitive pulling of material at work had aggravated the petitioner’s preexisting condition. Based on its findings, the circuit court reinstated the decision and award of the arbitrator. The law provides that an employee may be “accidentally injured” under the Workers’ Compensation Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1987, ch. 48, par. 138.1 et seq.) as the result of repetitive, work-related trauma even absent a final, identifiable episode of collapse. (Peoria County Belwood Nursing Home v. Industrial Comm’n (1985), 138 Ill. App. 3d 880, 487 N.E.2d 356, aff’d (1987), 115 Ill. 2d 524, 505 N.E.2d 1026.) Employers take their employees as they find them; when a worker’s physical structure, diseased or not, gives way under the stress of his usual tasks, the law views it as an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. (General Electric Co. v. Industrial Comm’n (1982), 89 Ill. 2d 432, 433 N.E.2d 671.) The sole exception to this rule is to deny recovery where the employee’s health has so deteriorated that any normal daily activity is an overexertion, or where the activity engaged in presented risks no greater than those to which the general public is exposed. Caterpillar Tractor Co. v. Industrial Comm’n (1982), 92 Ill. 2d 30, 440 N.E.2d 861. A claimant need not show that the work accident was the only causative factor, or even the principal causative factor. He need only show that the accident was a causative factor. (Smith v. Industrial Comm’n (1987), 161 Ill. App. 3d 383, 512 N.E.2d 712.) Further, as found by the circuit court, a claimant is not expected to know the unique meaning of the word “accident” under the Act. Luckenbill v. Industrial Comm’n (1987), 155 Ill. App. 3d 106, 507 N.E.2d 1185. We find very few discrepancies in the evidence presented in this case. It is undisputed that following the petitioner’s 1978 back surgery, he worked in a number of physically demanding jobs without incident. Prior to starting work with the respondent, he passed a preemployment physical examination. He then worked for almost two years without any back pain, though he did experience some numbness in his left leg. That numbness was merely a residual of the 1978 surgery. The onset of his current back problems coincided with the cutting of two workers from the press crew, which doubled his workload. Dr. Murphy testified that during his August 19, 1985, visit, the petitioner filled out a form stating that worker’s compensation was involved. While the petitioner did not at that time tell the doctor that his work was causing his back problems, Dr. Murphy did not ask the petitioner for a cause. Instead, the doctor merely examined the petitioner and ordered a CAT scan. Further, as the dissenting Commissioner and the circuit court noted, under the circumstances of this case it was unreasonable to expect the petitioner to believe that he had suffered an “accident.” When Dr. Murphy did take a history from the petitioner, the petitioner stated that he believed his work had caused his back problems. While the majority places considerable weight on the doctor’s agreement with the respondent’s attorney’s statement that the petitioner was a time bomb, we do not find it indicative of the doctor’s testimony as a whole. Dr. Murphy plainly stated on several occasions that he believed the petitioner’s work had aggravated his back condition and led to the herniated disc. Interestingly, the Commission’s factual findings were generally consistent with the overwhelming weight of the evidence. It was only when the Commission applied the law to its findings that it seriously erred in two respects. First, it erroneously relied on the petitioner’s failure to call his injury an “accident.” Second, it completely ignored Peoria Belwood. Regarding the first error, contrary to this court’s majority opinion, the Commission’s reliance on the petitioner’s failure to recognize his injury as an “accident” directly contradicts our holding in Luckenbill. Regarding the second error, the Commission’s reliance on the fact that Dr. Murphy suspected that the petitioner’s work had “aggravated the preexisting herniated disc, not caused it,” showed its misunderstanding of the law of repetitive trauma as set forth in Peoria Belwood. That finding should have led the Commission to uphold the arbitrator’s award. We therefore conclude that the circuit court correctly found that the Commission’s opinion was against the manifest weight of the evidence and correctly reinstated the arbitrator’s decision and award.