Stancil v. Massey

Decision Date03 November 1970
Docket NumberNo. 23205.,23205.
Citation436 F.2d 274
PartiesGeorge E. STANCIL v. William L. MASSEY, Deputy Commissioner, United States Department of Labor, Edgar G. Lail, t/a L & L Painting Co., Reliance Insurance Company, Appellants.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Mr. Philip J. Lesser, Washington, D. C., with whom Messrs. Gerald Herz and I. Irwin Bolotin, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellants.

Mr. Joseph H. Koonz, Jr., Washington, D. C., with whom Messrs. Lee C. Ashcraft and Martin E. Gerel, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellee, Stancil.

Messrs. Morton Hollander and Leonard Schaitman, Attys., Department of Justice, entered appearances for appellee, Massey.

Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, WILBUR K. MILLER, Senior Circuit Judge, and DAVIS,* Judge, United States Court of Claims.

DAVIS, Judge:

In January 1959 appellee George E. Stancil sustained an accidental injury to his back arising out of and in the course of his employment with appellant Edgar G. Lail. The other appellant, Reliance Insurance Company, which was Lail's workmen's compensation carrier, voluntarily made disability payments to Stancil for the period from January 16, 1959 to June 1, 1959. The last payment of compensation was made on June 10, 1959.

Shortly after the accident the employee was examined by a physician designated and paid by the carrier, and his condition was diagnosed as a mild back strain. He was treated for this condition until May 1959 when he was discharged and informed that he had no further disability.1 However, recurrent back pains forced him to seek treatment in 1961 and again in 1962. He was admitted to a hospital in 1962 for new treatment, and surgery performed in December of that year revealed that he was suffering from herniated or ruptured discs caused by the 1959 accident. That was the first time that either the doctor or the patient realized the character of the harm done by the accident.2

On June 20, 1963, about six months after the operation, Stancil filed a claim for compensation under the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (33 U.S.C. § 901 et seq. (1964)). The Deputy Commissioner denied the claim on the ground that it was not timely filed. The employee then instituted this action in the District Court in which Lail and Reliance unsuccessfully sought summary judgment. The court set aside the Deputy Commissioner's order and directed him to enter a compensation award in Stancil's favor, which he did. Lail and Reliance then renewed their motions for summary judgment which were again denied, and they suffered final judgment against them from which they appeal.

Section 13 of the Act (33 U.S.C. § 913 (1964)) requires a claim for compensation to be filed within one year after the "injury," or within one year after the last voluntary payment of compensation.3 Here the claim was not filed until more than four years after payments ceased. Therefore to be timely Stancil's claim must have been filed within one year of the injury. We are thus asked to construe the legislative term "injury" for the purpose of determining the commencement point for the limitation period in the Act.

The hallmark of this statute is hospitality to the claimant. The Supreme Court has said that the Act is to be liberally construed in accord with its purpose in a way which avoids harsh and incongruous results. Voris v. Eikel, 346 U.S. 328, 333, 74 S.Ct. 88, 98 L.Ed. 5 (1958); Reed v. S.S. Yaka, 373 U.S. 410, 415, 83 S.Ct. 1349, 10 L.Ed.2d 448 (1963). This court has also stated that the Act is to be construed with a view to its beneficent purposes and that doubts are to be resolved in favor of the employee. Friend v. Britton, 95 U.S.App. D.C. 139, 220 F.2d 820, cert. denied sub nom. Harry Alexander, Inc. v. Friend, 350 U.S. 836, 76 S.Ct. 72, 100 L.Ed. 745 (1955).

With this approach, the precise words of the Act take on special significance. Congress used "injury", in the limitations clause, not "accident" or "disability". These terms are not synonymous. "Accident" refers to the event causing the harm, "injury" to the harmful physical (in some instances, psychological) consequences of that event which need not occur or become obvious simultaneously with the event.4 The legislative history suggests that Congress was aware of the distinction. The provisions of the bill which became § 13 were amended so as to reduce the period for filing claims from two years to one year and to substitute "injury" for "accident" as the starting point. See Pillsbury v. United Eng'r Co., 342 U.S. 197, 203 n. 5, 72 S.Ct. 223, 96 L.Ed. 225 (1952) (Burton, J., dissenting). A reasonable inference is that in shortening the period for filing claims Congress also intended to create a more flexible measuring point from which the shortened period was to run. Thus, the history and the dictionary both teach that "injury" is not to be tied to the fixed point of the "accident" (or equated with "disability"). We think that the canon of liberal construction then instructs that "injury" should encompass physical harm of a kind which is unknown to the employee at the time of the accident but which is later revealed, such as an occupational disease or a latent wound. The general theory of the limitations provision is, as we understand it, that the workman should not dawdle too much in filing a claim once he knows (or should know) that there is something wrong with him of a nature which will potentially affect his ability to earn his pre-existing wage (whether or not it has already had that effect). Conversely, there is no intimation that Congress, contrary to its humanitarian aim, wished to penalize the employee who reasonably does not know that he has suffered harm which will, or may well, reduce his earning capacity. In short, once the man has been put on the alert (i. e., once he knows or has reason to know) as to the likely impairment of his earning power, there is an "injury"; before that time, while there may have been an accident, there is as yet no "injury" for claim or filing purposes under this statute.

This reading accords with the great majority of decisions under similarly worded state compensation statutes. These cases have held claims to have been timely filed, in comparable circumstances, although the period of limitations, if computed from the date of the accident, would have run.5 Such a construction would also be consistent with decisions in the latent-injury field generally. Most limitation-spans in tort run from the time of accrual of a cause of action — from the time when all the elements of the tort as required by the substantive law have occurred, and the victim has a right of recovery. Despite the existence of such a right, courts have delayed the commencement of the applicable period until the occurrence of some event without which suit would be impossible or unlikely. Developments in the Law: Statutes of Limitations, 63 Harv.L.Rev. 1177, 1200 (1950). For example, where the injury suffered is undisclosed to or unknown by the victim, the point of beginning may be postponed until the victim is or should be aware of the injury.6 The rationale is that it is unfair to bar the victim's recovery when he has not had a reasonable opportunity to file his action because he did not know his true injury. This is the principle already adopted, by judicial construction, for the commencement of limitations under the Federal Employers' Liability Act. Urie v. Thompson, 337 U.S. 163, 168-171, 69 S.Ct. 1018, 93 L.Ed. 1282 (1949); Coots v. Southern Pacific R. R., 49 Cal.2d 805, 322 P.2d 460 (1958). It also has been the rule, judicially developed, for occupational diseases under the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act. See Aerojet-General Shipyards, Inc. v. O'Keeffe, 413 F.2d 793, 795-796 (5th Cir. 1969). We know of no reason why the treatment of latent wounds under that Act should be different.

On the record, this case fits into the class of unknown harms. When appellee was discharged from treatment in May 1959, he was told in effect that the injury he had suffered would not further affect his capacity to earn a livelihood beyond the weeks he had already taken off (and for which he has been paid compensation under the Act). See note 1, supra.7 He believed, and from what the doctor told him he had a right to, that the pain from the "strain" would gradually decrease and eventually go away. When the pain continued, he still had the right to feel, on the basis of this medical advice, that it "would go away" (J.A. 77), hopefully in the near future. When he again sought medical help in 1961 and 1962, nothing in the record indicates that he was warned (until the disc operation) that the situation was different or more serious or that the pain might not "go away". The orthopedist candidly agreed, from the witness-stand, that it was a "fair statement" to say that the claimant was "perhaps * * * misled in his condition, that is, in his own interpretation, or his own feelings about his condition" by what he had been told and the course of treatment (J.A. 50). See, also, note 2, supra.

We have, then, a case in which, up to December 1962, the employee reasonably believed, on the basis of advice from the carrier's doctor, that he had simply suffered a back strain, that after May 1959 he had no further physical disability, and that his recurrent pain was connected with that strain and would disappear without lasting effect. On that basis, he had no reason to file a compensation claim under the Act. In his eyes, he had, in the statutory words, no "injury" for which he could file a claim, until the diagnosis of herniated discs in December 1962.8

In making this determination, we are not invading the province of the Deputy Commissioner as to fact-finding. He did not make any contrary findings. As we read his first order (denying compensation) it rested wholly on his legal ...

To continue reading

Request your trial
53 cases
  • District of Columbia Workmen's Compensation Act, Matter of
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit
    • October 4, 1976
    ...a back injury originally thought to be merely a strain but subsequently discovered to be worse. See Stancil v. Massey, 141 U.S.App.D.C. 120, 436 F.2d 274, 14 A.L.R.Fed. 390 (1970).49 Tr. 97. While apparently neither this report nor the report referred to in note 50 infra, was ever introduce......
  • Garrett v. Dyncorp International, BRB 20-0167
    • United States
    • Longshore Complaints Court of Appeals
    • April 28, 2021
    ...33 U.S.C. §913(a). Following the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Stancil v. Massey, 436 F.2d 274 (D.C. Cir. 1970), the courts of appeals have held that the statute of limitations begins to run only after the employee becomes aware or re......
  • Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. v. Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, U.S. Dept. of Labor
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit
    • September 21, 1978
    ...shows resulted from the injury. See Cooper Stevedoring of La., Inc. v. Washington, 556 F.2d 268 (5 Cir. 1977); Stancil v. Massey, 141 U.S.App.D.C. 120, 436 F.2d 274 (1970). The petitioner emphasized, however, that at the outset of the administrative hearing claimant's counsel agreed with th......
  • Harris-Smallwood v. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company
    • United States
    • Longshore Complaints Court of Appeals
    • April 3, 2002
    ...injury and her employment within which she may file a claim for compensation for the injury. 33 U.S.C. §913(a). In Stancil v. Massey, 436 F.2d 274 (D.C. Cir. 1970), the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the one-year limitations period does not com......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT