Sheppard v. Michigan Nat. Bank, No. 68

• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: SMITH; This case was submitted to us some time back. In the intervening period, as drafts of opinions, and conferences, have come and gone the Court has lost one cherished brother and gained another. Under these circumstances; BLACK, J., concurred wi
• Citation: 83 N.W.2d 614,348 Mich. 577
• Parties: Eula SHEPPARD, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. MICHIGAN NATIONAL BANK and State Accident Fund, Defendants and Appellants.
• Docket Number: No. 68
• Decision Date: 10 June 1957

Page 614

83 N.W.2d 614 348 Mich. 577 Eula SHEPPARD, Plaintiff and Appellee,
v.
MICHIGAN NATIONAL BANK and State Accident Fund, Defendants
and Appellants. No. 68. Supreme Court of Michigan. June 10, 1957.

[348 Mich. 578]

Page 615

Marcus, Kelman, Loria, McCroskey & Finucan, Muskegon (Thomas W. Finucan, Muskegon, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellee.

Harry F. Briggs, Lansing, for defendants-appellants. Peter Munroe, East Lansing, of counsel.

Before the Entire Bench.

[348 Mich. 582] SMITH, Justice.

We continue to pursue our melancholy way in these compensation cases, the Court dividing and re-dividing with monotonous regularity as the egregious errors of the past continue to war with the humanitarian objectives of the act we must construe. Our 'eminence' in these cases, as Dean Pound so cogently observed (see Mr. Justice Black in Mack v. Reo Motors, Inc., 345 Mich. 268, 281, 76 N.W.2d 35) is bad indeed. It will remain bad, and our people will continue to know a sorrow and distress peculiar to them alone, until our Court forsakes its 'stubborn' (I borrow the word from the Chief Justice) refusal to correct its judge-made errors. Our Court, commendably quick to correct to errors of others, must be equally quick to correct its own. Since my dissent in Wieda v. American Box Board Company, 343 Mich. 182, 191, 72 N.W.2d 13, pointing out Florida's reversal of its former errorneous construction of the word 'accident,' Arkansas has likewise acted. In the case of Bryant Stave & Heading Company v. White, Ark., 296 S.W.2d 436, 440, after commenting upon the controversy and litigation over the meaning of the word 'accident,' the court said: 'We agree that litigants, lawyers and members of the Commission are entitled to a definite and unequivocal settlement of the legal question here posed. In undertaking to do so, we see no vilid reason for not aligning Arkansas with the decided weight of authority on the subject * * *.' The court then concludes:

'Notwithstanding anything we may have said in prior cases, we hold that an accidental injury arises [348 Mich. 583] out of the employment when the required exertion producing the injury is too great for the person undertaking the work, whatever the degree of exertion or the condition of his health, provided the exertion is either the sole or a contributing cause of the injury. In short, that an injury is accidental when either the cause or result is unexpected or accidental, although the work being done is usual or ordinary. The judgment of the circuit court affirming the award is accordingly affirmed.'

Thus in one state after another a rule of reason consonant with the purpose of the act replaces arbitrary judicial fiat.

Page 616

Neither Arkansas, it will be noted, nor Florida acted under the whip of legislative compulsion. Each was secure in the knowledge that a court has inherent power to purge itself of its own errors. Failing in this duty, the day inevitably approaches when a court will stand alone, while the stream of life flows by, avoiding, but not being impeded by, the curious derelict in its path.

Our problems are multiplied, not simplified, by the current outpourings of opinion. It is now sought to perpetuate, with respect to our rulings concerning this simple term, accident, the spurious distinction between the ill and the healthy, between the weak and the strong, between those suffering to some degree from the ordinary diseases of life (who doesn't?) and those with no ailments or defects antedating the accident. This is clear from Croff v. Lakey Foundry & Machine Co., 320 Mich. 581, 585, 31 N.W.2d 728, 729, heavily relied upon this date. It is pointed out in Croff 'it can hardly be said that the 1943 amendment broadens the act to allow an award in a case of aggravation of a pre-existing disease without an accident or fortuitous event.' But, it is concluded, the disabilities of one without pre-existing disease or condition ('as distinguished from disabilities resulting from the aggravation of pre-existing disease or [348 Mich. 584] condition') are compensable without proof of accident or fortuitous event.

Thus mankind is placed in two categories as respects recovery for accidental injuries: those with a pre-existing 'disease or condition' and those not so handicapped. This classification we completely reject. Nothing is better settled in compensation law than that the act takes the workmen as they arrive at the plant gate. Some are weak and some are strong. Some, particularly as age advances, have a pre-existing 'disease or condition' and some have not. No matter. All must work. They share equally the hazards of the press and their families the stringencies of want, and they all, in our opinion, share equally in the protection of the act in event of accident, regardless of their prior condition of health. See 18 N.A.C.C.A. Law Journal 90, 92, and cases there cited.

How could a differentiation so monstrous, so destructive of the purposes of the act, ever have gained even a foothold in our law? Its history betrays its illegitimacy. Prior to the 1943 amendments, nothing was better settled in our Michigan law than that an employer took an employee as he found him. (He takes him 'as is,' it is sometimes phrased.) It was recognized that just as every man brings with him to the job some strength, he brings some weaknesses. None is perfect. In the early case of LaVeck v. Parke, Davis & Co., 190 Mich. 604, 157 N.W. 72, 73, L.R.A.1916D, 1277, we considered the case of a claimant with a pre-existing arteriosclerosis who had suffered the rupture of a cerebral blood vessel under conditions of unusual exertion. In affirming his award we cited with approval the English decision of Hughes [348 Mich. 585] v. Clover Clayton Co., 2 B.W.C.C. 15, quoting in part as follows:

"Every man brings some disability with him. Any exertion or any external action which might have been innocuous to a man in good health may produce most serious results to the workman bringing with him, as I have said, some disability. This man brought with him a disability of a serious nature--an aneurism--which I quite agree might have caused his death at some time or other without any exertion, usual or unusual. But in this case we have this fact found that a strain incurred by the workman in the ordinary discharge of his duties caused the rupture from which he died. As I read the decisions in the House of Lords, it is not open to this court to say that this is not an accident."

Page 617

Likewise, in St. Clair v. A. H. Meyer Music House, 211 Mich. 285, 178 N.W. 705, 706 we were equally explicit in granting compensation:

'The fact that applicant was predisposed because of disease to this form of attack is immaterial and has nothing to do with the question whether what befell him is to be regarded as an accident or not. See LaVeck v. Parke, Davis & Co., 190 Mich. at page 607, 157 N.W. 72.'

See also Hurley v. Selden-Breck Construction Co., 193 Mich. 197, 159 N.W. 311; Monk v. Charcoal Iron Company of America, 246 Mich. 193, 224 N.W. 354.

Thus we clearly established at an early date that disability caused by an aggravation of a pre-existing condition by a compensable event was compensable. We were not concerned with the nature of the pre-existing condition. Our attention, rather, went to the nature of the event causing the final disability. We did not attempt to separate those in perfect [348 Mich. 586] health from those not so blessed. Michael LaVeck's pre-existing arteriosclerosis did not bar him from compensability when his final disability was brought about by the conditions under which he worked.

Did the 1943 amendments change this? To our minds it is clear that they did not. What was sought to be changed by the amendments was our erroneous interpretation of the word 'accident.' (This interpretation had been taken from a shortlived decision of an intermediate English appellate court, which had been overruled in England 10 years prior to its embrace by us. See Wieda dissent, supra.) Changed it was. The terminology in Part 2 of the act now spoke in terms of a 'single event,' a term comprehending both cause and effect. The word 'accident' was eliminated in many places, but even where retained, as in the title, it could no longer be interpreted, as we had formerly done, to exclude the mishap in one's ordinary work. That is to say, no longer would it be possible to describe a disaster as not an accident simply because one was doing his ordinary work in his ordinary way. If the result was unanticipated and unexpected the result was as 'accidental' in legal effect as in ordinary speech. My conclusions in this regard are found in my dissent in Wieda, supra [343 Mich. 182, 72 N.W.2d 24]:

'* * * our Court [had] interpreted the word 'accident' to embody only the cause aspect, excluding the unexpected result of ordinary work. The word 'event,' however, is properly subject to no such ellipsis. It is clearly and indisputably a word referring to both cause and result. It is a word synonymous with occurrence and includes all of the steps or incidents from first cause to final effect. Should authority be demanded, beyond the authority of common speech, Webster's New International Dictionary (2d ed.) will illumine the point. The result, then, is that the word 'accident,' even where applicable in the act and its [348 Mich. 587] title, has now been restored to its original meaning. It refers to both cause and effect. It includes not only the unexpected incident or condition but also the unexpected result of ordinary work. Thus we have come full circle and have reached by remedial legislation the same result as the English courts by interpretation.'

These conclusions, it will be observed, are fully consistent with the underlying purpose of the act, to require industry to bear the burden of the injuries, rather than have them fall with crushing force on the workman himself. If lifting a garbage can (Hagopian...