Court Opinion

ID: 9710222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:04:37.885755+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:55.181407
License: Public Domain

Brickley, J.
(dissenting). I concur in the result reached by the majority, but write separately to express an analysis that I believe to be more responsive to the issues as framed by the parties and the lower tribunals.
The hearing referee found that the plaintiff brewery worker "has failed to sustain the burden of proof . . . that his disability was the result of any injury or occupational disease arising out of and in the course of his employment.” (Emphasis supplied.) He also held that "[p]laintiffs illness was not caused, aggravated or accelerated by con*622ditions characteristic and peculiar to the business of the defendant-employer.”
The wcab reversed the referee’s decision, finding that, although plaintiff was predisposed toward alcoholism, he was not an uncontrolled drinker when he was hired. It found that plaintiffs alcoholism was accelerated by the availability of free beer at the workplace. Plaintiffs witness, Dr. Smith, testified that, while free beer did not cause plaintiffs alcoholism, "[t]he availability of easily accesable [sic] alcoholic beverages no doubt contributed to the continuation of his alcoholism,” that it "probably accelerated the speed of his disease process,” and that the employment experience "probably contributed significantly to its course.”
Thus the wcab, citing Miklik v Michigan Special Machine Co, 415 Mich 364; 329 NW2d 713 (1982), and Kostamo v Marquette Iron Mining Co, 405 Mich 105; 274 NW2d 411 (1979) (heart disease cases), concluded that "it is beside the point that what would have happened anyway happened sooner because of exposure at work,” because the availability of beer at Stroh’s was also "responsible for the irreversible physical damage and personality disintegration testified about” and, finally, that, if "damage is done at work, compensation is in order.”
The Court of Appeals found ample evidence to support the wcab findings of fact and, citing Deziel v Difco Laboratories, Inc (After Remand), 403 Mich 1; 268 NW2d 1 (1978), posed the question, "Did the claimant’s employment aggravate, accelerate, or combine with some internal weakness or disease to produce the personal injury?” It answered in the affirmative.
Judge Gillis, in dissent, agreed with the hearing referee that "decedent did not receive a personal *623injury arising out of or in the course of his employment.”
All agree that the pertinent sections of the statute are as follows:
An employee, who receives a personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment by an employer who is subject to the provisions of this act, at the time of such injury shall be paid compensation in the manner and to the extent provided in this act, or in a case of his death resulting from such injuries the compensation shall be paid to his dependents as defined in this act. Time of injury or date of injury as used in this act in the case of a disease or in the case of an injury not attributable to a single event shall be the last day of work in the employment in which the employee was last subjected to the conditions resulting in disability or death. [MCL 418.301(1); MSA 17.237(301)(1).]
and
(c) "Personal injury” shall include a disease or disability which is due to causes and conditions which are characteristic of and peculiar to the business of the employer and which arises out of and in the course of the employment. Ordinary diseases of life to which the public is generally exposed outside of the employment shall not be compensable. [MCL 418.401(c); MSA 17.237(401)(c).]
The hearing referee said that the plaintiff suffered neither personal injury nor an occupational disease. The wcab did not use the words "personal injury” in its conclusion, but did utilize a personal injury analysis and cited cases in which the decision rested on a personal injury analysis.
The Court of Appeals expressly found a personal injury. In view of the finding of a personal injury *624by both the wcab and the Court of Appeals, apparently neither tribunal found it necessary to pursue an occupational disease analysis. The arguments of the parties before this Court exclusively center on a personal injury analysis, although they differ as to the outcome.
The majority, on the other hand, in arriving at its decision, pursues an occupational disease analysis.
The statute makes it clear that "personal injury shall include . . . [an occupational] disease.” Thus, occupational diseases are only one form of personal injury which, to be compensable, must be "due to causes and conditions which are characteristic of and peculiar to the business of the employer . . . .”
When the occupational disease concept was introduced into the scheme of workers’ compensation in 1937, only an "accidental or fortuitous event” qualified for compensation under what the statute then described as "personal accident” or "accidental injury” under the predecessor of § 301. See, e.g., Hagopian v Highland Park, 313 Mich 608, 619; 22 NW2d 116 (1946).
We have frequently held that under the compensation act, prior to the adoption of the occupational disease amendment, . . . one . . . cannot recover unless there is an accident or a fortuitous event causing the disability. It was for this reason that there was a special provision made in regard to hernia in the occupational disease amendment to the act.
In 1943, the statute was again amended to delete the limitation of only enumerated occupational diseases. 1943 PA 245. At the same time, "personal injury” was substituted for "personal accident” under the predecessor to § 301. Even *625with the addition of "personal injury” as the catchall coverage of the act, this Court continued to limit the § 301 predecessor coverage.
The Hagopian Court, in a four-to-three opinion, held that "accident” was changed to "injury” only to accommodate the occupational disease provision, not to broaden the coverage of the main injury provision of the act.
There was nothing whatsoever in the title to the act to indicate that the aggravation of a pre-existing sickness or disease without any accidental or fortuitous event was covered. [Hagopian, supra, p 620.]
Two years later, in interpreting the occupational disease provision, this Court said in a unanimous opinion, "we think it was the intention of the legislature to allow compensation for disability resulting from a disease contracted in the course of the employment and brought about by the nature of such employment and the conditions under which it was carried on.” Mills v Detroit Tuberculosis Sanitarium, 323 Mich 200, 212; 35 NW2d 239 (1948).
This history shows that the term "personal injury” was originally intended to cover the traditional accident or occurrence that is work-connected, and it was not envisioned that it would include occupational diseases of any sort, let alone ordinary diseases of life which are aggravated by work.
Expansion of the term "personal injury” over the years has now resulted in that term’s inclusion of not only occupational diseases, but ordinary diseases of life that need not be caused by employment, but only be "aggravated or accelerated” by employment. See Zaremba v Chrysler Corp, 377 *626Mich 226; 139 NW2d 745 (1966), and Miklik, supra. Included in this ambit are heart-related diseases and emotional and mental disorders. Even suicide can be a basis for compensation. Hammons v Highland Park, 421 Mich 1; 364 NW2d 575 (1984).
Since many of these diseases are progressive, ordinary activities of life will aggravate and accelerate them. Given that work fills the major portion of most persons’ lives, a finding that an ordinary disease of life is aggravated and accelerated by employment is an unremarkable development.
All of this, of course, has atrophied the occupational disease section of the act, leaving it no more than a signpost of the more limited original intent of "personal injury.”
The debates over the expansion of the concept of "personal injury” are adequately chronicled in the journals of this Court and the Legislature, and I do not intend to add to them. I do think, however, that we owe a candid analysis of this case, in keeping with the state of the law as we have enunciated it. We do not do that by ignoring the arguments and conclusions of the parties and the lower tribunals who know, as we must, that the term "personal injury” has eclipsed "occupational disease.”
I am satisfied that, in accepting the prevailing view that alcoholism is a disease — that the disease, while not caused by plaintiffs employment, was nonetheless contributed to by the conditions of his employment — the wcab and Court of Appeals have correctly applied the existing law of "personal injury arising out of and in the course of employment” to a disease that they found was contributed to by circumstances of the employment, even though unrelated to the plaintiff’s duties. Cf. Crilly v Ballou, 353 Mich 303; 91 NW2d 493 (1958), and *627Nemeth v Michigan Building Components, 390 Mich 734; 213 NW2d 144 (1973).
The net result of this finding, of course, is that an employee who cannot control his drinking, who declines opportunities of assistance to check the effects of his disease, and who ignores warnings of discipline for his substance abuse, will be compensated by the employer for a disease that was not caused by his employment, but rather, at most, was contributed to by a break-period program requested by company employees and was unrelated to the plaintiff’s duties. While most of these conditions standing alone have not been found by this Court to stand in the way of a recovery for a personal injury, taken together, in this factual setting, I find such a result simply unacceptable.
I cannot think of a clearer distortion of the laudatory goals of a program which has, overall, contributed so much to the principle of social justice in the workplace than that that would be visited by such a result. I do not think that the opponents of workers’ compensation could wish for a better weapon in their arsenal than this Court’s endorsement of such a result.
This case, in my judgment brings home to roost the tenuous definition of "personal injury” that has so expanded the original intent of those words. The Legislature itself has been moved to tighten that definition in respect to "[m]ental disabilities and conditions of the aging process” by adding the requirement that such "injuries” are compensable only if contributed to "in a significant manner.” Our adoption of the Court of Appeals result here would surely bring a similar response as to diseases of addiction. As Judge Gillis said in dissent:
To allow compensation in such a case such as this would be precedent for allowing compensation *628in such situations as where an employee is disabled as a result of complications related to obesity where that worker regularly dined in a company cafeteria where the prices were artificially low due to subsidization by the employer. Is lung cancer compensable merely because an employee is allowed to smoke at his desk and is provided with an ashtray? The situations begin to border on the ridiculous.
Just as we have by case law contributed to the evolution of the standard of compensability for personal injuries, standards which the Court of Appeals understandably found it within its role to apply in this case, we should bring those standards to heel in a setting such as this. Although alcoholism is a devastating disease to those who are stricken by it, unlike many other diseases, it is interrelated with behavior. Personal motivation is an important element of recovery.1 (See testimony of Dr. Smith, 1983 WCABO 691, 711-712.)_
*629Motivation, like culpability, generally has had no relevance in the workers’ compensation scheme; but when the personal injury concept has been so broadened as to include nonfortuitous and nonaccidental progressive diseases such as alcoholism that are interrelated with behavior, to ignore motivation would lead to absurd results.
For these reasons, I would hold that the general rule allowing for compensability where there is work aggravation of preexisting diseases should not prevail where the aggravating conditions are not required by the job and the disease is one from which recovery primarily depends upon personal motivation.
I would conclude that the hearing referee was correct in finding no basis for an occupational disease and reverse the Court of Appeals regarding the finding of a personal injury.

 See Hammond, ed, Almost all you ever wanted to know about alcoholism (Lansing, Michigan: Alcohol Research Information Service, 1986):
With some diseases the doctor may put the patient in the hospital, prescribe certain drugs, leave his orders with the head nurse and the chances are nearly 100% that the patient will get well. In many such cases, the patient may understand little if anything about the disease, and with a minimum of the patient’s cooperation, he is cured. Alcoholism isn’t that kind of illness.
[S]o much depends on the cooperation of the patient, the alcoholic.
The successful treatment of the alcoholic requires a lifetime commitment to total sobriety.
'Also see Bourne & Fox, eds, Alcoholism: Progress in Research and Treatment (New York: Academic Press, 1973), pp 291-293.
I also find the following authority to be persuasive:
Assuming that we have made a reliable and valid diagnosis *629of alcoholism, we have yet another problem to deal with before any treatment can begin. We must, somehow, get the alcoholic to want treatment. It would be nice if everyone who needed therapy for alcohol problems would drop by their community alcohol center and check in for treatment. Clearly, however, things just aren’t that simple. Much of the time, people with alcohol problems not only refuse any efforts toward treatment but deny that they have a drinking problem. Denial, self-deception, rationalizing and a whole host of other psychological mechanisms work against easy therapeutic intervention. [Ward, "Motivation in Treatment,” in Alcoholism: Introduction to Theory and Treatment (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1980), ch 7, p 252.]
See also Johnson, I’ll Quit Tomorrow (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p 63, where the author describes the first step of a recovery program. "First, he makes a mental commitment to cooperate in his treatment and to adopt a measure of responsibility for his own recovery.”