Industrial Comm. v. Brown

• Decision Date: 17 June 1915
• Docket Number: 14831
• Citation: 92 Ohio St. 309,110 N.E. 744
• Parties: The Industrial Commission Of Ohio Et Al. v. Brown
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

110 N.E. 744

92 Ohio St. 309

The Industrial Commission Of Ohio Et Al. v. Brown

14831

Supreme Court of Ohio

June 17, 1915

Workmen's compensation-Occupational diseases not included-Act of May 35, 1911 (102 O. L., 524; Section 1465-37 et seq., General Code) Authority conferred by Section 35, Article II. Constitution, 1912-Not fully exercised by legislature.

1. Under the provisions of the original workmen's Compensation act, passed May 31, 1911 (102 O. L., 524), a state insurance fund was created from which to provide Compensation for death or injury (not wilfully self-inflicted), resulting from accidents to employes of employers both of whom voluntarily contributed to the fund under the conditions named in the act. An injury or death resulting from disease contracted in the course of such employment, known as an occupational disease, is not such as contemplated by the provisions of the act referred to, and cannot be made the basis of a claim for compensation from the insurance fund so provided.

2. Although Section 35, Article II of the Constitution, as amended

in September, 1912, authorizes the legislature to pass laws providing an insurance fund to compensate workmen and their dependents for death, injuries or occupational disease occasioned in the course of employment, by compulsory contribution, the general assembly has not yet provided by law for the compensation for injury or death from occupational disease.

Facts are stated in opinion.

Mr Edward C. Turner, attorney general; Mr. Freeman T. Eagleson special counsel; Mr. John V. Campbell, prosecuting attorney and Mr. Charles A. Groom, Mr. Henry G. Hauck and Mr. Louis H. Capelle, assistant prosecuting attorneys, for plaintiffs in error.

Mr. Thomas H. Kelley and Mr. Richard Remke, for defendant in error.

NICHOLS C. J.

The particular question involved in the instant case is whether the words "personal injuries sustained in the course of employment" as used in the workmen's compensation law, approved June 15, 1911(1020. L., 524), include lead poisoning contracted in course of employment.

The defendant in error was employed in August, 1913, by The Eagle White Lead Co. of Cincinnati, such company being at the time a voluntary contributor to the state insurance fund. While thus employed Brown contracted lead poisoning of so serious a nature that he became sick and disabled from work. He made application for compensation to the state liability board of awards, and its successor, the industrial commission of Ohio, disallowed his claim. In January, 1914, Brown filed in the court of common pleas of Hamilton county his appeal from the decision of such industrial commission, in conformity with the provisions of the law. Trial was had, resulting in a verdict and judgment in favor of Brown, and this judgment was affirmed by the court of appeals of the same county.

Reversal of the judgments is now sought by the state.

The question is one of paramount public importance, not only to the industrial classes but to the state as well. The state has been administering this great trust for nearly four years, and during all that period the construction given the statute under consideration by the administrative body has been such as to preclude recovery for occupational disease, or any disease for that matter, incurred in the course of employment. For while the disease under consideration was clearly, occupational, yet if the claim of Brown to participate in the fund be sustained, it would at once open wide the doors to all claimants who have suffered from disease of any sort which they may have incurred while employed.

The premium rates assessed and collected by the administering board during this period of time have been fixed on a basis of death and injuries by accident solely, to the entire exclusion of injury through disease. It is quite patent that any other construction would necessitate an immediate and striking horizontal elevation of all premium rates and would in all probability prove a serious menace to the law itself.

Administrative interpretation of a given law, while not conclusive, is, if long continued, to be reckoned with most seriously and is not to be disregarded and set aside unless judicial construction makes it imperative so to do. This might be said to be particularly true of laws of the nature and character of the one under consideration. The state has entered on a virgin field, not wholly without chart or compass, it is true, yet without much in the way of experience to light the way. In a large measure Ohio may be said to be the pioneer in working out and reducing to a working basis the theories of workmen's compensation. No statute enacted in these latter days has had to encounter so fierce and powerful an opposition as this particular class of legislation. The law is yet on trial. It has to justify itself for its maintenance before the bar of public opinion. To seriously cripple it by a construction that could readily be defended from a legal standpoint, and that would at the same time be held to be the more humane interpretation, would in the long run work great injury to the industrial classes as a whole. An injustice would likewise be done to the employers of Ohio, who alone are contributing the millions that go to make up the fund.

Courts will take judicial notice of the events going to make up the history of a state as well as the transactions and objects intimately connected with it. Why, then, should this court, contrary to the general knowledge possessed by the people of Ohio, blind itself to the real situation and content itself with a mere abstract construction of what might be included in the phrase "personal injuries," realizing all the while that to grant the enlarged construction sought by the defendant in error would put in peril the splendid efforts that have been exerted by the public servants of Ohio, with much travail of soul, to provide compensation with promptness and certainty to the unfortunates killed and wounded in their battle for existence?

This court, with much...