Court Opinion

ID: 9573258
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:51:11.831933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:39:12.568421
License: Public Domain

Donworth, J.
(concurring) — I concur for the reasons stated in my concurring opinion in Windust v. Department of Labor & Indus., 52 Wn.2d 33, 323 P.2d 241 (1958).
Rosellini, C. J. (concurring in the result) — The legislature has met three times since the Windust case, 52 Wn.2d 33, 323 P.2d 241 (1958), was decided 8 years ago and has not seen fit to correct the holding that a heart attack occurring on the job is not compensable. In that case I favored applying the doctrine of stare decisis by following the interpretation of the statute which had been accorded by the court for a period of 25 years. To be consistent, I must now favor adhering to the reinterpretation placed upon it in 1958. This is on the assumption that the legislature, by failing to correct that reinterpretation, has indicated that it was of a mind to amend the statute and exclude heart attack victims from the coverage of the act.
However, I cannot see the logic in the exception to the rule which this court has adopted and which the majority opinion recognizes. This is the exception where a heart attack, to be compensable, must result from some “unusual exertion” just prior to the attack. I do not see how unusual exertions are any more “a sudden and tangible happening, of a traumatic nature, producing an immediate or prompt result, and occurring from without, and such physical conditions as result therefrom” than an ordinary exertion. In either case, the exertion precipitated the attack, and if one should be compensable, the other should be.
The effect of engrafting this exception onto the interpretation which this court adopted in Windust, supra, (wrongly, I think), is that a workman’s compensation for a heart attack will be granted or withheld depending on the length of time he has been doing a particular job. The majority opinion certainly implies that, if the heart attack *24had occurred on the day the deceased first undertook his new duties, the exertion involved in climbing into and out of the silo would have been a “sudden and tangible happening” and his widow would have been entitled to compensation. In other words, every hour and every day that the workman managed to survive on the new job diminished his chances of being compensated, when the exertions of his duties, acting upon his progressively diseased body, resulted in an attack. Such an interpretation of the statute makes the entitlement to compensation depend, not on the nature of the happening, but on the time of its occurrence. I find it hard to believe that the legislature intended such distinctions to be made.
Either the legislature intended that victims of heart attacks, occurring on the job and induced in part by the exertions required of a workman, should be compensated, or it intended that they should not. This court has given the legislature an opportunity to say that it was right in its interpretation of the statute during the 25 years preceding Windust, supra, and wrong in the new interpretation placed upon it in that case. Since the legislature has remained silent, I am forced to conclude that recent legislatures, at least, have felt that there should be no such compensation.