Court Opinion

ID: 9569238
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:11:42.62846+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:50:46.413719
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
While concurring fully with the majority opinion, I offer the following, additional relevant observations.
The statutory and case law of this state simply do not sanction the claimant’s compensation claim in this case. In Bullington v. Aetna Cas. &c. Co., 122 Ga. App. 842 (178 SE2d 901) (1970), compensability was not ruled out on a claim based on an employee’s having drunk himself to death because of a back injury. This writer concurred in that result then, but acknowledges now that that view was erroneous. (It is the absurd man who never changes his mind. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Holmes, 175 Ga. 655, 657 (333 SE2d 917) (1985) (Deen, P. J., dissenting)). In any event, Bullington does not support the claimant here, because (1) as noted by the majority opinion, the Supreme Court reversed it (227 Ga. 485 (181 SE2d 495) (1971)), and (2) Bullington had no precedential value in the first place because it was a two-judge decision.
In Grimes v. Burch, 223 Ga. 856, 860 (159 SE2d 69) (1968), the Supreme Court (all seven justices concurring) settled the policy in this state on the voluntariness of alcoholism. In doing so, the court relied upon the wisdom of Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin, which evidently bears repeating: “ ‘The fact is, responsibility depends upon the possession of will — not the power over it. Nor does the most desperate drunkard lose the power to control his will, but he loses the desire to control it. No matter how deep his degradation, the drunkard uses his will whenever he takes his cup. It is for the pleasure of the relief of the draught, that he takes it. His intellect, his appetite, and his will, all work rationally, if not wisely, in his guilty indulgence. And were you to exonerate the inebriate from responsibility, you would do violence both to his consciousness and to his conscience; for he not only feels the self-prompted use of every rational power involved in accountability, but he feels, also, precisely what this new philosophy denies — his solemn and actual wrongdoing, in *576the very act of indulgence. Converse seriously with the greatest drunkard this side of actual insanity — just compose him, so as to reach his clear, constant experience, and he will confess that he realizes the guilt, and therefore the responsibility of his conduct. A creature made responsible by God, never loses his responsibility, save by some sort of insanity.’ ” Choice v. State, 31 Ga. 424, 473-474 (1860). See also Burger v. State, 118 Ga. App. 328 (163 SE2d 333) (1968), wherein eight judges on this court rejected alcoholism as a disease or type of defense to a charge of drunkenness. (If a disease, it is the only disease that can be legally bottled and sold over the counter.)
It is thus clear that in this state, it is the drinker’s choice to drink, and the consequences of that drinking must be borne by the drinker. In the specific context of workers’ compensation claims, even the dissenting opinion yields to the statutory provision that “[a]lcoholism or disabilities attributable thereto shall not be deemed to be ‘injury’ or ‘personal injury’ by accident arising out of and in the course of the employment.” OCGA § 34-9-1 (4). By reasoning that the claim for alcoholic detoxification may be compensable as a medical expense relative to the back injury that was compensable, however, the dissenting opinion seeks to allow a claimant to recover indirectly what she could not recover directly, and places no value upon personal responsibility.
In the instant case, even accepting the employee’s explanation that her alcoholism resulted from her efforts to obtain relief from the pain and depression caused by her back injury, under the law it was her choice to drink abusively and the consequences of that choice are her responsibility. Were the law to bestow the indirect reward upon a claimant for making the choice of dipsomania, as advocated by the dissenting opinion, this court may as well open the lid of a Pandora’s box for compensation claims for the various costs consequential to pyromania, kleptomania, nymphomania, and any other mania, the indulgence of which may provide some distraction from the pain and depression experienced by an injured employee.