Jacobs v. Holden Leonard Co., Inc.

• Decision Date: 07 February 1939
• Docket Number: No. 114.,114.
• Citation: 4 A.2d 343
• Parties: JACOBS v. HOLDEN LEONARD CO., Inc., et al.
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

4 A.2d 343

JACOBS

v. HOLDEN LEONARD CO., Inc., et al.

No. 114.

Supreme Court of Vermont. Bennington.

Feb. 7, 1939.

Appeal from Commissioner of Industries; Howard E. Armstrong, Commissioner.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Stephen H. Jacobs, claimant, opposed by Holden Leonard Company Incorporated, employer, and the American Mutual Liability Insurance Company, insurer. From an award of the Commissioner of Industries granting compensation, the claimant appeals.

Order vacated, award set aside, and case remanded to Commissioner of Industries with directions.

Argued before MOULTON, C. J., and SHERBURNE, BUTTLES, STURTEVANT, and JEFFORDS, JJ.

George O. Hanford, of Bennington, for appellant.

J. Boone Wilson, Charles F. Black, and Willsie E. Brisbin, all of Burlington, for appellees.

BUTTLES, Justice.

On September 22, 1937, the plaintiff, claimant in the proceedings below, was injured by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment by the defendant Holden Leonard Co., Inc., and as a result suffered the loss by amputation of the little and ring fingers and total loss of use of the second finger of his left hand. Claim for compensation having been made and hearing duly had the commissioner of industries awarded compensation for a period of forty-five weeks for the permanent injury, this result being reached by adding the period of compensation provided by the schedule in P.L. 6527 for loss of each of the three fingers involved. The commissioner also found that as a result of the loss of these fingers the plaintiff had suffered a loss of fifty-four per cent of the usefulness of the hand, for which compensation would have been awardable for 75.6 weeks if computed on the basis of proportionate hand injury.

From the commissioner's award the plaintiff has appealed, under the statute, to this court. More than two pages of the printed case are used to state, under seven numbered paragraphs, the questions of law upon which review by this court is desired. Apparently all this can be reduced to one question of law which is whether the commissioner, in making the award, correctly applied the law to the facts found; or perhaps, more broadly stated, to what award is the plaintiff entitled under the law, by reason of the facts found?

Separately numbered subdivisions of P. L. 6527 provide that the compensation period for loss of a thumb shall be forty weeks, subd. 6; for loss of a first finger twentyfive weeks, subd. 7; of a second finger twenty weeks, subd. 8; of a third finger fifteen weeks, subd. 9, and of a fourth or little finger ten weeks, subd. 10. Subdivision 4 of the same section provides for "The loss by separation of one hand at or above the wrist joint, or the permanent and complete loss of the use of one hand, one hundred and forty weeks. The loss of the thumb and all four fingers of the hand shall be considered equal to the loss of the entire hand." Italics are ours, that sentence being a later amendment of the original section. So much of Subdivision 12 as is material to our inquiry here reads thus: "but in no case shall the amount received for more than one finger exceed the amount provided in this schedule for the loss of a hand." Subdivision 18 provides that: "In all other cases in this class, or where the usefulness of a member or any physical function is permanently impaired, the compensation shall bear such relation to the amounts stated in the above schedule as the disabilities bear to those produced by the injuries named in the schedule."

The question here presented is a new one in this jurisdiction. Of course the decisions of courts in other jurisdictions in construing similar provisions are valuable as aids in construing our own act so far as those decisions are applicable thereto, but, as was said in Kelley's Dependents v. Hoosac Lumber Co. et al., 95 Vt. 50, 53, 113 A. 818, 820 "the value of precedents is somewhat uncertain. A slight difference in the wording of the statutes or some small variation in the circumstances may impair the value of an outside decision when attempt is made to apply it here." Perhaps there are no provisions of the workmen's compensation law with respect to which greater care should be used in applying decisions of other courts than with respect to compensation for permanent partial disabilities under the various schedules of injuries.

The suggested uniform compensation law which was proposed by the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws following their conference of October, 1914, was a mere outline or framework. The suggested schedule of injuries contained only five items and the periods of compensation were left blank in each instance, to be filled in by each state as it might see fit. See Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Annual Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, pp. 313 and 314. In Vermont this schedule has now been expanded to twenty-one items or subdivisions. In other jurisdictions there has been a similar expansion, with a very considerable amount of diversity as the result. Under the law of at least two states we understand that age of the claimant is a factor which must be considered in awarding compensation under the schedule, and in at least one state it appears that the award is made to vary with the occupation of the injured person. The method of computing compensation varies considerably in other respects in the various schedules. In some states the compensation payable under the schedule is exclusive, while in others an award is also made for temporary total disability. In some states the total obtained by adding the scheduled compensation for each of the five digits exceeds that provided for loss of the hand, while in Vermont and some other states this total is less than that given for loss of the hand. The law in some states, at least as originally enacted, contained no "other cases clause" by which compensation could be awarded for loss of a member or of a function not scheduled, nor was provision made for partial loss of a member or of function of a member.

The majority of the cases which have passed upon the question here raised have held that compensation for multiple finger and thumb injuries should be computed by adding the amounts awarded for the separate digits and not by finding the proportion of total hand loss sustained. We think, however, that a study of these cases and of the statutes upon which they were based indicates that at least in a majority of them there were reasons for such holding which do not exist under our law, and furthermore that under our law there are reasons for sustaining the other method which do not obtain under the laws of the states which have upheld the addition method. Under our law the total obtained by adding the compensation given for the five digits is 110 weeks. Compensation for loss of the hand is 140 weeks. But subd. 4 as stated above provides that the loss of the thumb and all four fingers shall be equal to loss of the hand. The result is that the compensation for loss of the five digits would be 140 weeks, but for loss of all except the little finger the compensation would be only 100 weeks, so that if the little finger also were amputated the compensation would be increased forty weeks instead of ten weeks, which is the scheduled value of that finger. More important is the fact that if we are confined to the addition method in computing compensation for multiple finger injuries the second clause of subd. 12 can have no meaning, since by that method the amount awarded for more than one finger could not possibly, in any case, exceed the scheduled compensation for loss of hand, and except in case of loss of all fingers and thumb such compensation must always be materially less than for loss of hand.

The defendants admit that their theory renders this provision of subd. 12 meaningless and resort to the ingenious argument that the drafters of our compensation law naively copied subd. 12...