Klika v. Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 79

• Decision Date: 23 January 1925
• Docket Number: No. 24154.,24154.
• Citation: 202 N.W. 30,161 Minn. 461
• Parties: KLIKA v. INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST. NO. 79.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

161 Minn. 461

202 N.W. 30

KLIKA

v.INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST. NO. 79.

No. 24154.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Jan. 23, 1925.

Certiorari from Industrial Commission.

Proceeding before the Industrial Commission for compensation by John Klika, claimant, opposed by Independent School District No. 79, employer. The Commission entered an order denying compensation, and claimant prosecutes certiorari. Remanded for rehearing.

Stone, J., dissenting.

Syllabus by the Court

An inguinal hernia, the development of which is caused by overexertion or strain, is an ‘accidental injury’ within the Workmen's Compensation Act and is compensable. It is unimportant in the administration of the law whether from a medical or scientific standpoint hernia is classed as a disease or a malformation or is otherwise designated; nor is it important that the employé is predisposed thereto. The law concerns itself only with the legal cause.

The finding of Industrial Commission on questions of fact is binding upon the Supreme Court.

If there is a misapprehension or misapplication of the law, the case may be remanded for a hearing. Where the evidence points forcefully to an unusual strain in the course of employment as the legal cause of the development of a hernia, and the asserted medical view that hernia is a progressive disease is so emphasized and so permeates the consideration of the case as to obscure the search for the legal cause, a rehearing should be granted. L. J. Lauerman, of Olivia, for relator.

L. N. Foster and W. L. Emerson, both of Minneapolis, for respondent.

DIBELL, J.

Certiorari to the Industrial Commission to review its order denying compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act to John Klika, the relator, for a hernia alleged to be the result of an accidental injury received while in the employ of the respondent school district.

[1] 1. In the forenoon of June 20, 1923, Klika was working on the defendant's grounds. He was pushing a wheelbarrow, heavily loaded, in stickey gumbo. The wheel ‘went into a hole,’ ‘got locked full of dirt, and I pushed him with all my strength, then I felt a kind of pain in my side right away.’ The pain was ‘just like somebody pushed there with finger or something like that and something tear right on the side here.’ He worked for two or three days, but his work was lighter. He saw a doctor on June 27, 1923. He was then ruptured. He says he had not been ruptured before. An operation disclosed an inguinal hernia. The attending surgeons say it was of recent origin. They accept Klika's version as to the cause of it. One of them says he himself sustained a hernia ‘in just that way’ through an abdominal strain, when pushing his auto. The testimony of the physician called by the school district, while favoring the doctrine that hernia is of a gradual development, is not particularly opposed to the claim that the strain was the legal cause. Questioned as to the probability of a hernia being produced by the relator's exertion at the time, he says:

‘My opinion is that an extra exertion at a time like that, of course, may be the exciting cause; but indications are that there has been some previous condition that would bring it about.’

And it is enough that the extra exertion is the exciting cause. So, in Zappala v. Ind. Ins. Com., 82 Wash. 314, 316, 144 P. 54, 55 (L. R. A. 1916A, 295), a hernia case, the court said:

‘The sustaining of an injury while using extreme muscular effort in pushing a heavily loaded truck is as much within the meaning of a fortuitous event as though the injury were the result of a fall or the breaking of the truck. To hold * * * that if a machine breaks, any resulting injury to a workman is within the act, but if the man breaks, any resulting injury is not within the act, is too refined to come within the policy of the act. * * * The machine and the man are within the same class as producing causes, and any injury resulting from the sudden giving way of the one, while used as a part of any industry within the act, is as much within the contemplation of the act as the other.’

That the relator may have been predisposed to hernia, that there was, using the language of respondent's witness, ‘some previous condition that would bring it about,’ does not prevent compensation. Babich v. Oliver Iron Mining Co. (Minn.) 195 N. W. 784;Casper Cone Co. v. Ind. Com., 165 Wis. 255, 161 N. W. 784, L. R. A. 1917E, 504. The same rule applies to the rupture of a blood vessel. Milwaukee v. Ind. Com., 160 Wis. 238, 151 N. W. 247. And so of a heatstroke. Ismay v. Williamson, [1908] A. C. 437. The aggravation of an existing malady or disease by an accident is compensable. Hogan v. Twin City Amusement Trust Estate, 155 Minn. 199, 193 N. W. 122;Peoria Ry. Ter. Co. v. Industrial Board, 279 Ill. 352, 116 N. E. 651; Brightman's Case, 220 Mass. 17, 107 N. E. 527, L. R. A. 1916A, 321. And so in Ismay v. Williamson, [1908] A. C. 437, 441, it was held that a heatstroke was compensable as an accidental injury, ‘although a heatstroke may be called a disease.’

Conceding that it is the accepted medical or scientific view that hernia is a disease, the law has no quarrel with it. The law is concerned with the ascertainment of the legal cause. If the result comes by accident within the meaning of the statute it is compensable. G. S. 1923, § 4326; Laws 1921, c. 82, § 66. It is then unimportant whether from a medical standpoint it is a disease or a malformation or is otherwise designated.

If an accidental injury results in a hernia, or aneurism, or paralysis, the result, whatever the proper medical or scientific term applicable to it, is compensable. Babich v. Oliver Iron Mining Co. (Minn.) 195 N. W. 784 (hernia); Fenton v. J. Thorley & Co. Ltd., [1903] A. C. 443 (rupture); Casper Cone Co. v. Industrial Com., 165 Wis. 255, 161 N. W. 784, L. R. A. 1917E, 504 (hernia); Puritan Bed Spring Co. v. Wolfe, 68 Ind. App. 330, 120 N. E. 417 (hernia); Poccardi v. Pub. Serv. Com., 75 W. Va. 542, 84 S. E. 242, L. R. A. 1916A, 299 (hernia); Robbins v. Original Gas Engine Co., 191 Mich. 122, 157 N. W. 437 (hernia); State v. District Court, 137 Minn. 30, 162 N. W. 678 (paralysis through rupture of blood vessel); State v. District Court, 138 Minn. 250, 164 N. W. 916, L. R. A. 1918F, 918 (sunstroke); Clover v. Hughes (1910) A. C. 242 (aneurism); Stombaugh v. Peerless, etc., Co., 198 Mich. 445, 164 N. W. 537 (heart rupture); Milwaukee v. Ind. Com., 160 Wis. 238, 151 N. W. 247 (rupture of blood vessel); Gilliland...