Greenville Finishing Co. v. Pezza

• Decision Date: 30 July 1953
• Docket Number: No. 2204,2204
• Citation: 98 A.2d 825,81 R.I. 20
• Parties: GREENVILLE FINISHING CO., Inc., et al. v. PEZZA. Equity
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 825

98 A.2d 825

81 R.I. 20

GREENVILLE FINISHING CO., Inc., et al. v. PEZZA.

Equity No. 2204.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

July 30, 1953.

Hinckley, Allen, Salisbury & Parsons, Matthew W. Goring and Joseph H. Gainer, Jr., Providence, for petitioners.

Thomas H. Needham, Providence, for respondent.

CONDON, Justice.

This is an employer's petition to review a preliminary agreement providing compensation of $20 per week for total incapacity of the respondent employee resulting from an injury arising out of and in the course of his employment with petitioner. The employer's insurer has joined in the petition. After a hearing in the superior court the petition was denied and dismissed and a decree to that effect was duly entered. From such decree petitioners have appealed to this court.

They rely upon sixteen reasons in support of their claim of appeal. For the purpose of argument, however, they have compressed them in their brief under four points as follows: 1. There is no legal evidence to support certain findings in the decree. 2. The trial justice erred in finding that respondent was totally incapacitated from a traumatic neurosis consequent upon the injury described in the agreement, and in denying and dismissing the petition for such reason. 3. There is no legal evidence to support a finding that respondent was incapacitated by a traumatic neurosis. 4. The trial justice erred in certain rulings on the admission of evidence and in refusing to grant petitioners' motion to strike testimony tending to show that respondent's incapacity was due to an injury not described in the preliminary agreement.

The decree contains the following findings: '1. That said respondent is not now disabled from the specific injury described in the preliminary agreement, namely, 'enucleation of left eye--face lacerations.' 2. That said respondent is now totally disabled from a traumatic neurosis which is a consequence of said injury. 3. That said neurosis is real and genuine.'

It appears from the transcript that respondent was injured on April 8, 1949 while unscrewing the cap of a fire extinguisher in the performance of his duty as a maintenance man. The cap blew off and struck him in the left eye causing the loss of that eye. Thereafter petitioners agreed to pay compensation for the incapacity thus caused by the injury which was described in the agreement simply as 'Enucleation of left eye--face lacerations.'

The petitioners are presently paying respondent compensation but now claim that the agreed injury is no longer incapacitating him from earning full wages. They are insisting here, as they did in the superior court, that they are obligated to pay compensation only for such incapacity as is due to the physical injury described in the agreement and not for any neurotic consequences flowing therefrom. The claim is made that it was error for the trial justice, after finding that respondent was no longer incapacitated by the injury described in the agreement, to hold petitioners liable for a traumatic neurosis not described therein, even though such neurosis was a natural consequence of that injury.

The first finding of fact in the decree is not controverted by petitioners. On the contrary they expressly argue that there is legal evidence to support it and therefore such finding is conclusive. That is true and hence we start with the established fact that as far as the physical loss of his left eye is concerned respondent is not incapacitated. The first real question here is whether there is legal evidence to support the second and third findings of the decree. If so the next question is whether or not a traumatic neurosis due solely to respondent's nervous reaction to the loss of his left eye, the physical injury specifically stated in the agreement, is reasonably within the scope of that described injury so as to authorize the superior court to consider it on a petition for review. The reasons of appeal bearing on the evidentiary rulings to which objections were made are necessarily involved in the answer to that question.

This court has reaffirmed the view that the superior court on consideration of a petition to review a preliminary agreement is confined to the specific injury stated therein. Airedale Worsted Mills, Inc. v. Cote, 75 R.I. 361, 66 A.2d 802; Manville Jenckes Corp. v. Lubinski, 76 R.I. 36, 68 A.2d 107; Peters v. Monowatt Electric Corp., 78 R.I. 134, 79 A.2d 922, 81 A.2d 424; Hanley v. Westminster Motors, Inc., R.I., 90 A.2d 762. In the Peters case we made it clear that what we were disapproving in principle in the above case...