Court Opinion

ID: 9631601
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:44:17.431027+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:57.826866
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE DAVIS:
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I agree that Spieth’s appeal to the district court after the board’s denial of his petition for rehearing brought his claim before that court and within its jurisdiction. But I do not agree with the disposition which the majority makes of the case upon the merits. I would set aside the judgment of the lower court and affirm the board’s order.
My dissents in Levo v. General-Shea-Morrison, 128 Mont. 570, 280 Pac. (2d) 1026; Rathbun v. Taber Tank Lines, Inc., 129 Mont. 121, 283 Pac. (2d) 966, and Gaffney v. Industrial Accident Board, 129 Mont. 394, 287 Pac. (2d) 256, give in detail my view of the function of this court upon its review of cases arising under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. What *225I wrote in those cases of the principles I would apply to Spieth’s appeal I summarize in these words, viz., (1) Although it is our duty to construe this Act liberally, we may not under the guise of a liberal construction construe where no construction is necessary to extract a plain meaning plainly expressed by the words found in the statute; and (2) neither we nor the district court may overturn the board’s findings of fact in any case where those findings are supported by substantial evidence in the record, and there is no preponderance of that evidence to the contrary.
First here, of the latter of these cardinal principles: The district court accepted the findings made by the board in this case, as I believe was its plain duty within the rule which I have stated. These findings are supported by substantial evidence. There is no preponderance of that evidence against them. We need then give no further consideration to the facts of Spieth’s claim. They are established beyond dispute.
From these facts it appears that Spieth has sustained a partial disability permanent in character which is compensable, i.e., he has suffered a ‘ ‘ severe crushing injury to the distal phalanx of his right thumb.” Speith is undeniably entitled to compensation accordingly consistent with R.C.M. 1947, section 92-703, as amended by section 3, Chapter 7, Laws of 1949, and as supplemented by R.C.M. 1947, section 92-709, amended also by section 6, Chapter 7, Laws of 1949. Hence our sole problem is to apply those statutes to his claim.
Admittedly, amended section 92-703 provides, inter alia, that the compensation to be paid Spieth shall not exceed the “total compensation provided in this act for the total loss of the member causing such partial disability”, which is here the thumb. I have no doubt at all the thumb is a member of the body within the meaning of our Act. Plainly then in point for me is section 92-709, as amended, which stipulates that a claimant shall be paid for the loss of a thumb at the proximal joint at the applicable weekly rate for thirty-seven weeks, and no longer. For, if this is the “total compensation *226provided in this act for the total loss of the member causing such partial disability”, to which section 92-703 refers, as I believe it is, then under that section Spieth may recover upon his claim exactly what the board awarded him, and no more.
Our problem upon this appeal accordingly resolves itself into this: Do the words of these controlling statutes, sections 92-703, 92-709, justify us in construing them at all, or authorize us to do other than apply them as written to Spieth’s case? I have myself no difficulty in answering this question as did the board. Its conclusion I believe was correct, and should be here affirmed.
As I read sections 92-703 and 92-709, they are not susceptible of different meanings; conversely stated, the words and the phrases used in these statutes mean but one thing to me. In them there inheres no ambiguity, there is found no uncertainty. Consistent with the first of the rules which I have stated by which in my opinion we are to measure this record we are not then to construe or rewrite these statutes in any way. We are called upon only to apply them as written.
But this is not all. If it can be said that at some point section 92-703 conflicts with section 92-709, and that some ambiguity is hidden in the text of these statutes, it remains never-the less that more than a quarter of a century ago in Novak v. Industrial Accident Board, 73 Mont. 196, 235 Pac. 754, this court resolved that conflict and at the same time authoritatively explained away any such ambiguity. The words and phrases considered and applied in the Novak case, R.C.M. 1921, section 2914, differ in no substantial particular from the words and phrases found in the statutes which are today to rule Spieth’s case. Indeed the controlling language of the statutes at bar is identical with that considered and construed in the Novak case.
As counsel for the appellant rightly notes in his brief, that decision has not heretofore been overruled or modified by this court in any particular, but to the contrary has at least once been cited with approval in Sullivan v. Anselmo Mining Corp., 82 Mont. 543, 552, 553, 268 Pac. 495. The reasoning of the *227opinion written in the Noyak ease and adopted there by a. unanimous court is sound, or so it seems to me. As a precedent that decision has stood since 1925 unchallenged until the majority opinion was written here in Spieth’s case.
In these circumstances I see no justification for overruling now Novak v. Industrial Accident Board. I see no point in uprooting thus what has been settled law for something like thirty years heretofore. Particularly I think it wrong on this appeal to deny effect to this precedent, which was the law of Montana at the time Spieth was injured and when first he became entitled to compensation.
To alter in this fashion the obligation of the insurer, which when the Novak case was law bound itself to compensate Spieth for his injury as that law then stood, comes close indeed to an impairment of the obligation of the insurer’s contract within the meaning of both the State and Federal Constitutions. I do not propose, however, to turn to the principles of constitutional law to justify in any part my disagreement with the majority in this case. I need not reach that far.
More than once heretofore this court has said that if an earlier decision is overruled or substantially modified, the new rule announced will only apply prospectively to eases and contracts which arise thereafter. Such at least should be our holding here, I think, even if otherwise the prevailing opinion were right. See Montana Horse Products Co. v. Great Northern R. Co., 91 Mont. 194, 215, 7 Pac. (2d) 919; Continental Supply Co. v. Abell, 95 Mont. 148, 171, 24 Pac. (2d) 133. But I do not hold to the Mew that it is right under any reading of its test. The two precedents in this court which I have last cited merely furnish additional reasons why I am persuaded the majority is wrong, and their opinion here unsound in its application of the law no less than in their construction of the Compensation Act.