Macedo v. Atlantic Rayon Corp.

• Decision Date: 25 February 1954
• Docket Number: No. 2251,2251
• Parties: MACEDO v. ATLANTIC RAYON CORP. Eq.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 64

103 A.2d 64

81 R.I. 339

MACEDO v. ATLANTIC RAYON CORP.

Eq. No. 2251.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

Feb. 25, 1954.

Frank W. Golemba, Providence, for petitioner.

Boss & Conlan, Francis W. Conlan, Providence, for respondent.

FLYNN, Chief Justice.

This is an employee's appeal from a decree of the superior court denying her petition for review of a preliminary agreement duly entered into by the parties and approved by the director of labor under the Workmen's Compensation Act, General Laws 1938, chapter 300.

Such agreement described the nature of petitioner's injury as 'Lower back sprain' which was caused by 'Pulling box sideways, hit truck, lost balance and fell onto truck' in an accident happening April 23, 1943. Compensation thereunder for total incapacity was paid until July 11, 1947, when this court affirmed a decree of the superior court, entered on the employer's petition for review, finding that the employee was not then suffering from incapacity as a result of the accident described in the agreement, and terminating further compensation payments thereunder. Atlantic Rayon Corp. v. Macedo, 73 R.I. 157, 53 A.2d 756.

Thereafter, on March 5, 1951, the employee filed the instant petition for review, alleging therein that she was then suffering from 'a re-occurrence of her original injury which resulted in an operation for a ruptured disc on about December 13, 1949.' After a hearing in the superior court a decree was entered finding that the intervertebral disc condition disclosed at the operation performed in December 1949 was not caused by the accidental injury of April 23, 1943, and that such condition was separate and distinct from the injury described in the preliminary agreement entered into by the parties on June 11, 1943.

The petitioner does not dispute the law as stated in Peters v. Monowatt Electric Corp., 78 R.I. 134, 79 A.2d 922, 81 A.2d 424; Manville Jenckes Corp. v. Lubinski, 76 R.I. 36, 68 A.2d 107, and Airedale Worsted Mills, Inc. v. Cote, 75 R.I. 361, 66 A.2d 802. But she claims in effect that the trial justice misconceived the evidence; that the description 'Lower back sprain' amounts only to a general description of the area or location of the injury in terms of a layman; and that it was error not to apply the rule stated in Hanley v. Westminster Motors, Inc., 80 R.I. 22, 90 A.2d 762, 764.

Apparently the trial justice in his decision expressed a feeling that in the Hanley case there had been 'a slight relaxation of the rule set forth in the Peters case.' But he also pointed out that it was made crystal clear in the Hanley case that an injury of ruptured intervertebral disc was permitted to be the basis of a petition for review only because of the general description, 'Rt. sacro-iliac area,' there appearing in the preliminary agreement as the nature and location of the injury.

The last part of the trial justice's conclusion is correct, but this court did not thereby intend a relaxation of the rule stated in the Peters case. Where the nature of a particular injury is described in the agreement, the court on a petition to review may consider any incapacity arising out of and flowing from the original injury, if the causal connection thereof is established. Airedale Worsted Mills, Inc. v. Cote, supra. But it may not consider on such a review any incapacity caused by a new, separate and different injury. Peters v. Monowatt Electric Corp., supra; A. D. Juilliard & Co. v. De Conti, R.I., 102 A.2d 116.

On the other hand, where the nature of the injury is not specifically described and only the location or area thereof is generally designated in the agreement, then any injury reasonably located within such area, if causally related to the original accident and injury, may be considered. This is due not to a...