Paretti v. Dyers.
| Decision Date | 03 October 1946 |
| Citation | 48 A.2d 902 |
| Parties | PARETTI v. SPOTLESS CLEANERS & DYERS. |
| Court | New Jersey Court of Common Pleas |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Workmen's Compensation Bureau.
Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by John B. Paretti, compensation claimant, opposed by the Spotless Cleaners & Dyers, employer, to recover compensation for temporary permanent disability. From a judgment of the Workmen's Compensation Bureau, allowing the claimants compensation for temporary and permanent disability, the employer appeals.
Judgment affirmed.
Autenreith & Wortendyke, of Newark, for petitioner-appellee.
Brett, O'Brien & Brett, of Newark, for respondent-appellant.
This matter was tried in the Workmen's Compensation Bureau on October 19 and November 2, 1945, and January 17, 1946. The Deputy Commissioner by whom it was heard, in his determination of facts and rule for judgment, dated February 14, 1946, found in favor of petitioner-appellee (hereinafter called petitioner) and against respondent-appellant (hereinafter referred to as respondent), and allowed petitioner 12 2/7 weeks, at $20 a week, for temporary disability, and 50 weeks, at the like rate, for permanent disability. From the judgment, entered accordingly, respondent appealed.
It is uncontroverted here, as it became, at length, in the Bureau, that at about 9:15 o'clock on the morning of June 20, 1944, petitioner suffered accidental injury arising out of and in the course of his employment by respondent, and that respondent had due notice or knowledge of it. ‘The contest here,’ declares respondent's brief, ‘is solely on the question of the nature and extent of permanent disability alleged to be due to the claimed accident,’ and-somewhat more broadly-‘It is the contention of the respondent that the alleged accident did not bring about any temporary or permanent disability in’ petitioner.
Respondent conducts a cleaning and dyeing business, with a laundry department, employing at the time of petitioner's accident 260 or 270 persons. Petitioner, then in his 55th year, weighing about 250 pounds, and in apparent good health (he had been absent only two days during the 12 years of his employment by respondent, and in 26 years had lost no time through illness), worked, in his own words, ‘as a fancy washer and trouble searcher,’ with from four to six men (and occasionally none, ‘according to how we can get help’) under his direction. The term ‘trouble searcher’ seems to have covered much ground; he held, at any rate, a position of some importance and responsibility, and when at length it became necessary to replace him, the management was obliged to go outside of its plant to find his successor.
At the time of his accident, petitioner was pushing from the rear, while another employee, walking backwards, was guiding from the front, a steel truck, about five feet in length, 30 or 40 inches wide, three feet high, with an eight-inch wheel base, then carrying between 700 and a 1,000 pounds of wash, up a cement ramp, the surface of which was broken by hollows. Through a mishap a wheel of the truck slipped into a hollow; and the truck, tilting to petitioner's left, toppled over upon him and pinned him down.
When, without forewarning, the burdened truck stopped short, petitioner ‘went into’-rammed or struck against, he appears to have meant-its steel railing, a circumstances mentioned by him in describing the accident, but of which he made nothing; and as he was borne down by the tipping truck and the sliding load upon it. the left side of his head ‘about the ear’ struck against a steel cabinet standing nearby.
The capsized truck struck petitioner on his left inguinal region-the groin and lower abdomen-and on his left leg and knee.
Unable to stir, he made an outcry; two employees, whom he named, moved away the truck and wash, and upon extricating him walked with him out into the yard, where he sat for five or six hours. At about two o'clock in the afternoon he went back into the plant; beyond telling others what to do, he undertook no work; some one or more persons gave him sedatives and bathed his side; at the usual quitting hour the tailor, as seems to have been customary, conveyed him home by car. He went up, not without some difficulty, a short flight of steps leading into his house, had supper, and from the supper table went directly to bed, and stayed abed throughout the two following days.
On arriving at his home, his left side was swollen; a small hernia (a result of an earlier accident, as was conceded, in the same plant; in 1936 he had been struck in the groin by the flying cover of a breaking extractor), scarcely noticeable before, had become plainly distended; the area of his left knee was swollen and red; and he complained of his head.
On the third day respondent's laundry department fell into trouble; the assistant washer had not come in, his wife being very sick; respondent, having no substitute for him, was in a plight. It got word to petitioner of the emergency, and besought him to return to his department. At first he refused, spoke of a difficulty with his leg, and stated that he ‘could not make it.’ Respondent's spokesman pressed him to come back, and offered him transportation from the railway station to the plant. In the end petitioner yielded; the promise of transportation was faithfully kept; from that day until the assistant washer reappeared-a period of almost a month-petitioner was met at the depot and was carried in the manager's car to the plant.
Without expressly denying this special transportation service, the manager, who was called by petitioner as a witness, disclaimed, except for one instance on a rainy day, all knowledge of it; but his testimony as a whole is quite unsatisfactory; like the employee under whose guidance a wheel of the truck dropped into a hole in the ramp, he knew much too little about everything concerning which he was asked.
In the unusual circumstances hereinbefore stated, petitioner went back, at the importunity of his employer, to his work. but not to the former scope of it. Thenceforth he oversaw and directed, without otherwise participating in, the physical work of the laundry. He limped about the plant with the aid of a cane, supervised and bought supplies (the latter apparently by telephone or mail); a forelady supplied salve for his leg; he took simple remedies at hand for continuous or daily headache. At least twice at the point of quitting, he perseveringly filled the breach until the assistant washer came back, and then immediately left.
In the intervening month his hernia became more and more formidable and troublesome; it progressively grew from the size of a coin to the proportions of a ‘grapefruit’ or larger; and descending, lay in a kind of sac. On the following day after terminating his employment, he was taken to a Veterans' Hospital in the Bronx, New York, for an operation; recited the history of his hernia to the girl in charge of the admission of patients, went back home for three or four days, and then entered the hospital (July, 1944). He was put to bed there, examined every day, given medicine for headache, as he supposed. after each meal, operated on for hernia on September 12, and a hydrocele developing three or four days later-said by the doctors to be not uncommon after a hernia operation-was operated again for that, and was discharged on October 25, with a caution against the resumption of work. On June 20 of the following summer (1945) he entered, at the instance of the Veterans' Hospital in the Bronx (as we understand it), the Navy Hospital at St. Albans, Long Island, for leg and head ‘trouble,’ and stayed there until July 25.
Since July, 1944, he has performed no work, and at the times of his examination by the doctors who testified in the Bureau, was admittedly incapable of any.
In testifying in the Bureau (November 2, 1945), he complained of pain in his left side and in his head behind the left ear, in his back, in his leg and knee where the truck had struck him, of headache, of dizziness, of inability to stand long or to sleep on his left side, of impairment of sight and hearing-all symptoms appearing since his accident and, rightly or wrongly, attributed by him to it. There is no reason to question his statement that the outstanding thing which led to his withdrawal from his employment was the pronounced aggravation of a hernia, from which he had previously suffered no inconvenience, and the resulting interference with his getting about. He said that while in the...
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