Court Opinion

ID: 9552852
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:18:23.671406+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:29:14.116482
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice.
I dissent.
Applicant had a pterygium on his left eye and was told by his doctor in 1948
“that at a later date he would sooner or later have to have it taken care of.”
The medical testimony is that pterygiums are normally caused by exposure to wind and dust and their rate of progress depends on the extent of such exposure. The doctor replied affirmatively that it is likely that a continuous exposure to wind and dust for approximately another two years would have caused the pterygium in the left eye to increase. He also testified that he could not determine whether the rate of pterygium growth was affected by the flash because he had not examined the eye after 1948 until July 14, 1950.
On May 29, 1950, a blinding flash from a welder’s torch struck applicant in the eye. He stayed home from work the next day with packs on his eye. He worked thereafter for six weeks when his doctor advised him that he should have the pterygium removed. Under this state of the evidence the referee concluded that
“The probabilities are that surgery would have been necessary whether or not the flash incident took place.”
*675Periodically, we are confronted with a close case which engenders sympathy and involves niceties in the weighing of evidence but which nevertheless is governed by the overarching principle that the legislature has made the Industrial Commission and not the judges of this court the sole finders of the facts. Witness the case of Norris v. Industrial Commission, 90 Utah 256, 61 P. 2d 413.
Certainly the evidence in this case which involved compensation for costs incident to the removal of the growth on the left eye, to the effect that, absent the flash burn, the pterygium would have been ripe for removal, supplies the basis for a finding that the burn could be ignored as not an efficient cause for the necessity of an operation but that such was required because of exposure to wind and dust. I think the denial of industrial accident compensation by the Commission should be affirmed.
McDONOUGH, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of WOLFE, C. J.