Sheppard v. Michigan Nat. Bank
Citation | 83 N.W.2d 614,348 Mich. 577 |
Decision Date | 10 June 1957 |
Docket Number | No. 68,68 |
Parties | Eula SHEPPARD, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. MICHIGAN NATIONAL BANK and State Accident Fund, Defendants and Appellants. |
Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
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.
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: The court then concludes:
Thus in one state after another a rule of reason consonant with the purpose of the act replaces arbitrary judicial fiat. 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 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 v. Clover Clayton Co., 2 B.W.C.C. 15, quoting in part as follows:
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:
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 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.' 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]:
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 v. City of Highland Park, 313 Mich. 608, 22 N.W.2d 116, compensation denied) or a gun barrel (Anderson v. General Motors Corporation, 313...
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