Dennis v. Department of Labor and Industries of State of Wash.

• Decision Date: 25 November 1987
• Docket Number: No. 53022-0,53022-0
• Citation: 745 P.2d 1295,109 Wn.2d 467
• Parties: Kenneth E. DENNIS, Respondent, v. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND INDUSTRIES OF the STATE of WASHINGTON, Petitioner.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

Page 467

109 Wn.2d 467

745 P.2d 1295

Kenneth E. DENNIS, Respondent, v. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND INDUSTRIES OF the STATE of WASHINGTON, Petitioner.

No. 53022-0.

Supreme Court of Washington En Banc.

Nov. 25, 1987.

Ken Eikenberry, Atty. Gen., Robert G. Swenson, Asst. Atty. Gen., Seattle, Thomas R. Chapman, Asst. Atty. Gen., Spokane, for petitioner.

Hennings, Maltman, Weber & Reed by Douglass A. North, Aaby, Knies & Robinson by Joseph A. Albo, Seattle, for respondent.

Craig R. Staples, Portland, Or., on behalf of Washington Self-Insurers Ass'n, amicus curiae for petitioner.

Michael J. Welch, Tacoma, on behalf of Washington State Labor Council, amicus curiae for respondent.

Albert R. Johnson, Jr., Seattle, on behalf of Joint Council of Teamsters and Bryan P. Harnetiaux, Michael J. Pontarolo, and Robert H. Whaley, Spokane, on behalf of Washington Trial Lawyers Ass'n, amici curiae.

BRACHTENBACH, Justice.

The Department of Labor and Industries (Department) seeks reversal of a Court of Appeals decision awarding workers' compensation to respondent Kenneth Dennis for disability resulting from an occupational disease. Dennis v. Department of Labor & Indus., 44 Wash.App. 423, 722 P.2d 1317 (1986). We affirm.

Dennis, a sheet metal worker, quit working due to disabling osteoarthritis in his wrists. He filed a disability claim with the Department, which denied the claim on the basis that Dennis had not sustained an industrial injury and that his disease was not an occupational disease. Dennis appealed the decision to the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals (Board). He abandoned his injury claim and pursued only his occupational disease claim. Following a hearing, the hearing examiner prepared a proposed order and decision reversing the Department's rejection of the claim and granting Dennis' claim for disability resulting from an occupational disease. The Department sought review by the full Board, which affirmed the Department's rejection of the claim. On Dennis' appeal to Superior Court, summary judgment was granted in favor of the Department. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for trial. We granted the Department's petition for review.

Dennis was a sheet metal worker for 38 years. His job required him to use 9- to 18-inch bladed tin snips for 4 to 5 hours per day to cut metal. Since at least 1970 Dennis was affected by generalized, diffuse, and multi-joint osteoarthritis. At the hearing, Dennis' attending physician presented uncontroverted medical testimony that the work aggravated the osteoarthritis in Dennis' wrists and that the osteoarthritis became symptomatic and disabling as a result of repetitive metal snipping. Dennis and his doctor were the only witnesses to testify. There is no dispute that Dennis is disabled due to the condition of his wrists.

In Stertz v. Industrial Ins. Comm'n, 91 Wash. 588, 590-91, 158 P. 256 (1916), this court explained the genesis of this state's workers' compensation scheme: The Industrial Insurance Act (Act), RCW Title 51, was the result of a compromise between employers and workers. In exchange for limited liability the employer would pay on some claims for which there had been no common law liability. The worker gave up common law remedies and would receive less, in most cases, than he would have received had he won in court in a civil action, and in exchange would be sure of receiving that lesser amount without having to fight for it. Industrial injuries were viewed as a cost of production.

RCW 51.04.010 embodies these principles, and declares, among other things, that "sure and certain relief for workers, injured in their work, and their families and dependents is hereby provided [by the Act] regardless of questions of fault and to the exclusion of every other remedy." To this end, the guiding principle in construing provisions of the Industrial Insurance Act is that the Act is remedial in nature and is to be liberally construed in order to achieve its purpose of providing compensation to all covered employees injured in their employment, with doubts resolved in favor of the worker. RCW 51.12.010; Sacred Heart Med. Ctr. v. Carrado, 92 Wash.2d 631, 635, 600 P.2d 1015 (1979); Lightle v. Department of Labor & Indus., 68 Wash.2d 507, 510, 413 P.2d 814 (1966); Wilber v. Department of Labor & Indus., 61 Wash.2d 439, 446, 378 P.2d 684 (1963); State ex rel. Crabb v. Olinger, 196 Wash. 308, 311, 82 P.2d 865 (1938); Gaines v. Department of Labor & Indus., 1 Wash.App. 547, 552, 463 P.2d 269 (1969).

With this principle in mind, we turn to the issues raised by this case involving occupational disease coverage. Disability resulting from occupational disease coverage is compensable pursuant to RCW 51.32.180, which provides that a worker suffering disability from an occupational disease shall receive benefits under the Act:

Every worker who suffers disability from an occupational disease in the course of employment under the mandatory or elective adoption provisions of this title, or his or her family and dependents in case of death of the worker from such disease or infection, shall receive the same compensation benefits and medical, surgical and hospital care and treatment as would be paid and provided for a worker injured or killed in employment under this title ...

RCW 51.32.180. Occupational disease is defined in RCW 51.08.140 as "such disease or infection as arises naturally and proximately out of employment."

Focus upon these statutes alone, narrowly construed, would seem to result in exclusion from coverage of the condition here involved because the underlying disease did not arise from employment. The Department urges this construction, and argues that, as a threshold determination, the claimant's underlying disease must have been contracted as a result of employment conditions.

Such a construction would, however, be contrary to the purpose of the Act. By expressly providing that workers suffering disability from occupational disease be accorded equal treatment with workers suffering a traumatic injury during the course of employment, RCW 51.32.180 effectuates the Act's purpose of providing sure and certain relief to all workers injured in their employment. The worker whose work acts upon a preexisting disease to produce disability where none existed before is just as injured in his or her employment as is the worker who contracts a disease as a result of employment conditions.

Moreover, we have long recognized that benefits are not limited to those workers previously in perfect health. Groff v. Department of Labor & Indus., 65 Wash.2d 35, 44, 395 P.2d 633 (1964); Kallos v. Department of Labor & Indus., 46 Wash.2d 26, 30, 278 P.2d 393 (1955); Jacobson v. Department of Labor & Indus., 37 Wash.2d 444, 448, 224 P.2d 338 (1950); Miller v. Department of Labor & Indus., 200 Wash. 674, 682-83, 94 P.2d 764 (1939).

It is a fundamental principle which most, if not all, courts accept, that, if the accident or injury complained of is the proximate cause of the disability for which compensation is sought, the previous physical condition of the workman is immaterial and recovery may be had for the full disability independent of any preexisting or congenital weakness; the theory upon which that principle is founded is that the workman's prior physical condition is not deemed the cause of the injury, but merely a condition upon which the real cause operated.

Miller, at 682-83, 94 P.2d 764. The worker is to be taken as he or she is, with all his or her preexisting frailties and bodily infirmities. Wendt v. Department of Labor & Indus., 18 Wash.App. 674, 682-83, 571 P.2d 229 (1977).

Thus, we have repeatedly recognized in a long line of cases that where a sudden injury "lights up" a quiescent infirmity or weakened physical condition occasioned by disease, the resulting disability is attributable to the injury and compensation is awardable. See, e.g., Harbor Plywood Corp. v. Department of Labor & Indus., 48 Wash.2d 553, 295 P.2d 310 (1956); Ray v. Department of Labor & Indus., 177 Wash. 687, 33 P.2d 375 (1934) (preexisting dormant arthritic condition lighted up and made active by injury). In Harbor Plywood Corp., this court held compensation was due where the evidence established that an industrial injury aggravated a preexisting nonwork-related cancer, causing acceleration of the employee's death due to cancer. It would be anomalous were we to hold on the one hand that compensation is due under the Act where a sudden injury results in aggravation of a nonwork-related disease, but is not due where disability results from the progressive effect of work activity on a nonwork-related disease. In each case disability results from employment conditions; in each instance the worker may be equally affected, in one case swiftly, in the other slowly.

The historical development of occupational disease coverage in Washington further supports our conclusion that disability resulting from work-related aggravation of a nonwork-related disease may be compensable as an occupational disease. Washington's Industrial Insurance Act was enacted in 1911. There was then no coverage for disability resulting from occupational disease; only injuries sustained performing certain extrahazardous work were compensable. Laws of 1911, ch. 74, § 2, p. 346. Indeed, contraction of disease was expressly excluded from the Act. Laws of 1911, ch. 74, § 3, p. 346, 349. This exclusion of occupational diseases paralleled that of statutes in other states. Then, in the 1920's and 1930's a number of states developed schedules of covered diseases. 1B A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation § 41.20 (1987); see also Solomons, Workers' Compensation for Occupational Disease Victims: Federal Standards and Threshold Problems, 41 Alb.L.Rev. 195, 197-98 (1977). In concert with this national trend toward expanded workers' compensation coverage, in 1937 the Legislature passed the first law providing compensation for...