Court Opinion

ID: 9618268
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:09:58.095809+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:27.154676
License: Public Domain

HUNTLEY, Justice,
concurring specially.
I agree that this case should be remanded to the Industrial Commission for more appropriate and specific findings of fact and conclusions of law. The commission merely stated that the claimant did not meet her burden of proof in showing that her injury occurred while on the job and failed to make any specific finding as to whether it is more probable from all of the evidence that the injury occurred either on the job or off the job. The commission was presented with what appears to be ample testimony that the only stress applied to claimant’s back occurred at the job site. Further, there was no testimony that claimant’s herniation was solely caused by the aging process.1
There is ample testimony which, if believed, does satisfy claimant’s burden of proof. Of course, the commission is entitled to find that the testimony was not credible and therefore reject it, but it did not so find. It is for these reasons that I concur in this opinion remanding this case to the commission for specific findings as to what it determines to be the more probable cause of the herniated disk.
However, I would also like to highlight what I believe to be the major problem source in cases of this kind. As stated in the majority opinion, I.C. § 72-102(14)(b) requires that before a claimant may recover for an accident or injury occurring in the work place or on the job, such accident or injury must be “reasonably located as to time when and place where it occurred.” Simply put, the statute does not require a plaintiff to pinpoint an exact time when the injury occurred, but only a reasonable estimate of such. Indeed, in unique cases such as this, where a claimant has, in all likelihood, suffered an injury as a result of cumulative and repeated stress or trauma, it would simply be unfair and unreasonable to require the impossible of a claimant who is not able to pinpoint one exact date upon which such an injury or accident occurred.
Prior to the 1971 comprehensive amendment of the workmen’s compensation law, I.C. § 72-201 (the predecessor of the present I.C. § 72-102(14)(b)) read: “Accident” as used in this law, means an unexpected, undesigned, and unlooked for mishap, or untoward event, happening suddenly and connected with the industry in which it occurs and which can be definitely located as to time when and place where it occurred, causing an injury as defined in this law.” (Emphasis supplied). By deleting the words “happening suddenly,” and supplanting the words “definitely located” by the words “reasonably located,” it is evident that this state’s legislature meant *363to require of the claimant only such proof as to time when and place where any injury occurred as was reasonably possible.
Also of some importance is the fact that this Court has long recognized that justice and fairness require that, in cumulative injury cases, the claimant is not required to pinpoint an exact date of an injury or accident.
In Reinoehl v. Hamacher Pole and Lumber Co., 51 Idaho 359, 6 P.2d 860 (1931), this Court ruled that a claimant who had died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever resulting from tick bites received over a period of two weeks while on the job had a compensable “accident,” even though the cause- of the claimant’s death could not be attributed to one particular tick bite. Reinoehl was, itself, merely one in a line of cases so holding.
In McNeil v. Panhandle Lumber Co., 34 Idaho 773, 203 P. 1068 (1921), this Court addressed a case strikingly similar to the one at hand. In McNeil, repeated heavy lifting on the job gradually caused the detachment of claimant’s retina, loss of the right eye, and, in that particular case, total blindness. This Court refused to deny McNeil his right to recover for failure to fix with particularity the time when his ultimate injury occurred, stating:
“Undoubtedly in most cases of accidental injury the claimant would be able to fix not only the day but the hour, if necessary, when the accident occurred. But in a case of this kind in which the injury may not appear for some time after it has been actually inflicted by the accident, it would be manifestly unfair and a denial of justice to refuse compensation because the claimant could not identify the very day of the accident, though he could fix the time with reasonable certainty. To so hold would be to misconstrue the main provisions of this [workmen’s compensation] law, whose purpose is declared by the legislature to be to provide sure relief for injured workmen and their families and their dependents. [Citation omitted]. The workmen’s compensation law, like other laws of this state, is to be liberally construed with a view to effect its object and promote justice.” 34 Idaho at 786, 203 P. at 1081.
This Court again set forth the concerns of McNeil in Aldrich v. Dole, 43 Idaho 30, 249 P. 87 (1926), where the Court affirmed a judgment reversing the decision of the Industrial Accident Board which had denied an award to claimant Aldrich. Aid-rich had worked driving a truck in which the gears had become worn requiring Aldrich to press a shift-lever with his right knee and causing repeated blows to the knee by the lever. Eventually, the knee was bruised to such extent that it became disabled. This Court again noted the injustice of denying compensation in such a case:
Now if the single pressing of the knee against the lever and the single striking of the knee by the lever would result in an injury by accident, can we say that the injury actually received was not caused by accident merely because there was a continuation of the causes that brought on the injury? The statute does not restrict compensation to an injury that results from single event, and there would seem to be no sound reason for holding that an injury occasioned by a number or series of events is not within the act. 43 Idaho at 35, 249 P. at 92.
If anything, there is even less reason today to accord any deference to the notion that a claimant must specify with particularity a single event or happening which constitutes the “accident” or results in the claimed injury. This state’s legislative amendment to I.C. § 72-201 (resulting in the present I.C. § 72 — 102(14)(b)) requires that this Court accord more, and certainly not less, consideration to claimants’ attempts to reasonably locate their injuries than this Court did seventy years ago.
I would rule that on the basis of this record claimant has amply demonstrated that her back injury arose from her heavy lifting at work and that the accident has been reasonably located as to the time and place of its occurrence.
BISTLINE, J., and BENGTSON, J., pro tern, concur.

. In his concurrence, Justice Bistline persuasively notes that “it must be kept in mind that any orthopedic surgeon, including .a back specialist, can say, truthfully, that it is possible that a disk injury’s attributable to the natural aging process of degeneration.” By so stating, Justice Bistline highlights a truism which often tends to confuse the issue in back injury cases. Every claimant, and, indeed, every person is continually affected by the aging process. To hone in on that process without at least some substantial evidence showing that the injury was not caused by, or exacerbated by, more than just the aging process would be to do a gross disservice to all claimants in back injury cases.