Ducasse v. Walworth Mfg. Co.

• Decision Date: 10 December 1948
• Docket Number: No. A-23.,A-23.
• Parties: DUCASSE v. WALWORTH MFG. CO.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court

62 A.2d 480

DUCASSE

v.WALWORTH MFG. CO.

No. A-23.

Superior Court of New Jersey.Appellate Division, Part A.

Dec. 10, 1948.

Syllabus by the Court.

1. Workmen's Compensation Bureau has continuing jurisdiction to modify the award of compensation to accord with an after occurring enlargement or diminution of the incapacity so found to have resulted from the established compensable injury.

2. In proceeding for additional compensation for injury to lower back, involving unsuccessful operation, claimant was required only to establish that his theory was a probable or more probable hypothesis with reference to the possibility of other hypotheses.

3. Where injured employee used reasonable care in the selection of physicians and submitted to surgical operation which was unsuccessful and aggravated the original injury; held, employee is entitled to recover compensation for increased permanent disability resulting therefrom.

Appeal from Court of Common Pleas, Hudson County; August Ziegener, Judge.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Robert J. Ducasse, opposed by Walworth Manufacturing Company, for additional compensation for increased disability. From a judgment affirming an award of additional compensation, the Walworth Manufacturing Company appeals.

Affirmed.

Before JACOBS, Senior Judge, and EASTWOOD and BIGELOW, Judges.

Everitt Rhinehart and John W. Taylor, both of Newark, for appellant.

Frank Fink and James J. Carroll, both of Newark, for respondent.

EASTWOOD, Judge.

A writ of certiorari was allowed by Mr. Justice Bodine, of the former Supreme Court, to review the propriety of a judgment of the Hudson County Court of Common Pleas entered on May 24, 1948, affirming an award of additional compensation by the Workmen's Compensation Bureau to respondent under R.S. 34:15-27, N.J.S.A., for increased disability amounting to thirty-five per cent of total permanent disability occurring subsequent to the original award to respondent in June, 1943.

Ducasse was injured in the course of his employment on October 7, 1940, while sliding a 150 pound valve on a skid into a truck. The employment was admitted; payments of temporary disability were made; and a consent judgment was entered in the original proceedings establishing petitioner's permanent disability at fifteen per cent of total, which defendant also paid. The dispute is medical in nature and the weight and credibility to be given to plaintiff's proofs is the question presented to us. Following the accident of October 7, 1940, petitioner went the next evening to Dr. D'Ambola, who treated him until about the middle of December, for what he diagnosed as a ‘strain of the upper abdominal muscles'. He was treated also by Dr. DePalma, to whom he had been referred by Dr. D'Ambola. Dr. DePalma, in turn, sent him to Dr. Wheeler for further treatment and he was then sent to Dr. Eisenberg who treated him for a period of three months. He was also seen by Dr. Clemens and Dr. Leon Lewis until the time of the original hearing on May 25, 1943. The findings of the treating physicians during this period may be summarized as being referred to the lower back and left leg. It is contended by petitioner that his condition became worse almost immediately after the award; that he then consulted Dr. Grinwiss, a neighborhood physician; was examined at the Orange Orthopedic Hospital; that on September 1, 1943, he went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he was examined by three doctors, and an operation was performed on his back by Dr. Walter E. Dandy, an eminent surgeon. Petitioner remained at the hospital for approximately ten days and remained out of work until January 31, 1944. He then returned to his employment, doing lighter work, and remained there until March 1, 1944. Thereafter, he secured employment as a taxicab driver. In September, 1944, petitioner claimed that he was compelled to remain in bed for a period of two weeks and that the pain in his back became so intense that he was hospitalized at St. Michael's Hospital in Newark by Dr. D'Ambola, where he remained for five and one-half weeks. Part of the treatment at that institution consisted of an asbestos cast extending from a few inches below petitioner's neck down to his hips in which he remained for three weeks. The treatments at St. Michael's Hospital apparently effected no improvement in petitioner's condition and he remained home for a period of five months. He did not work again until March 1, 1945, when he resumed his employment at the taxicab company as a part-time clerk answering the telephone and other kindred light duties.

Petitioner contends that his condition is now worse than it was at the original hearing on May 25, 1943; that he cannot bend, his back is stiff, he has pain radiating down his left leg, he is constantly in pain day and night and cannot do any heavy work at all; that he has a list of the back and is unable to move normally in all directions; that he wears an abdominal belt constantly. Through his medical experts, Dr. D'Ambola and Dr. Watman, his partial permanent disability is established as high as sixty-six and two-thirds per cent of total.

In opposition to the lengthy case history hereinabove recited, the respondent contends that the award of increased permanent disability is erroneous in four respects: (1) that the increased disability, if any, resulted from the surgical operation for which there is no evidence produced as to the nature of or the necessity for such operation; (2) that petitioner had certain pre-existing injuries prior to October 7, 1940, which contributed in some degree to the disability, and that the award is erroneous in that there was no proof as to how much of the disability is due solely to the compensable accident; (3) that the judgment of the Common Pleas is against the weight of the evidence; and (4) that the principle of res adjudicata was violated by the award of compensation for increased incapacity predicated in part on evidence that the testimony forming the basis of the original judgment was erroneous.

The testimony discloses that prior to the injury involved here, petitioner had some osteo-arthritic changes in the lumbar vertebrae, a curvature of the spine with convexity to the right side at the dorso-lumbar level, and apparently a non-fusion of the spinous processes of the first and lower sacral segments; that he was struck by an automobile in 1931, injuring his left leg, and that in 1937, he strained his back which was taped by a physician. Our review of the evidence leads us to the conclusion that these injuries left practically no residual effects in existence at the time of the...