Court Opinion

ID: 9740404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:34:39.020498+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:12.821596
License: Public Domain

North, C. J.
(concurring). In concluding that section 8, part 7, of the workmen’s compensation act (CL 1948, §417.8 [Stat Ann 1950 Bev §17.227]) should be applied in fixing the amovmt of plaintiff’s compensation, my Brothers Boyles and Sharpe have lifted out of the commission’s opinion a single sentence, which I think they have overemphasized, and possibly misconstrued. This is the sentence:
“We find that plaintiff is totally disabled from silicosis complicated by tuberculosis.”
At the time this sentence was written in the commission’s opinion it was then literally true that plaintiff was “totally disabled from silicosis complicated by tuberculosis.” It was not only a true statement, but it was a proper fact finding bearing upon the permanency of plaintiff’s total disability. However, from the commission’s opinion, read as a whole, it appears there is no justification for minimizing plaintiff’s compensation under section 8, part 7, except in the manner hereafter noted. Our decision should be controlled by the following findings of the commission, which are supported by competent testimony:
“He (plaintiff) finally had to quit work because of his condition. * * * There can be no doubt that plaintiff contracted silicosis as a result of exposure to free silica during the course of his employment in defendant’s foundry. It is equally clear that plaintiff has been totally disabled as a core maker, the employment in which he was engaged when he contracted the disease, since he left defendant’s employ in the month of November, 1945. * * *
*181“We further find that the disease (silicosis) is due to causes and conditions which are characteristic of and peculiar to the business of the defendant and which arose out of his employment by defendant. We find November 23,1945, to be the date of disablement.”
Since, as found by the commission, plaintiff was totally disabled from performing the skilled labor in which he was engaged on November 23, 1945, he was then and there entitled to an award of compensation on the basis of permanent total disability, subject only to the provision that if “such employee is able to earn wages at another occupation which shall be neither unhealthful nor injurious and such wages do not equal his full wages prior to the date of his disablement, the compensation payable shall be a percentage of full compensation proportionate to the reduction in his earning capacity.” CL 1948, §■ 417.3 (Stat Ann 1950 Rev § 17.222).
Surely if, as the record shows, it was only at a substantially later period that plaintiff became afflicted with tuberculosis, it cannot be said that plaintiff’s tuberculosis affliction had any causal relation to his total disability which he had suffered many months before. To hold otherwise would lead to an absurd result in cases of this character. If the employee’s silicotic condition is not later aggravated Icy tuberculosis, he will receive full compensation for his total disability; but if the employee has the greater misfortune of being also afflicted with tuberculosis after he became totally disabled from silicosis, he then must be awarded less than full compensation for total disability by reason of applying to his case section 8, part 7, of the workmen’s compensation act.
The case is remanded to the commission for entry of a modified award in accord with Mr. Justice Bush*182nell’s opinion, with the result of which I concur. Costs to appellee.
Dbthmers, Carr, and Reid, JJ., concurred with North, C. J.
Butzel, J., did not sit.