Simpson's Case.

• Decision Date: 18 May 1949
• Parties: SIMPSON'S CASE.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

66 A.2d 417

SIMPSON'S CASE.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

May 18, 1949.

Appeal from Superior Court, Sagadahoc County.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Donald J. Simpson and another opposed by the Bath Iron Works Corporation and the American Mutual Liability Insurance Company. From a pro forma decree entered pursuant to a decision of the Industrial Accident Commission, the defendants appeal.

Appeal sustained.

Hutchinson, Pierce, Atwood & Scribner, Portland, for Donald J. Simpson and Anna O'Meara, petitioners.

William B. Mahoney, Portland, John P. Carey, Bath, for Bath Iron Works Corporation and American Mut. Liability Ins. Co., respondents.

Before STURGIS, C. J., and THAXTER, MURCHIE, TOMPKINS, FELLOWS and MERRILL, JJ.

MURCHIE, Justice.

The propriety of the decision of the Industrial Accident Commission, referred to hereafter as the ‘Commission’, under review, on this appeal of the defendants from a pro forma decree of the Superior Court entered pursuant thereto, must be determined by construing the second and closing sentence of the first paragraph of Section 9 of The Workmen's Compensation Act, referred to hereafter as the ‘Act’, as it was effective at the time of the industrial accident to which the proceedings relate, November 21, 1941, R.S.1930, Chap. 55. The controlling language is: ‘The amount of such services and aids shall not exceed one hundred dollars unless a longer period or a greater sum is allowed by the commission.’

The emphasized words (emphasis having been supplied) refer to the ‘reasonable and proper medical, surgical and hospital services, nursing, medicines and mechanical surgical aids' which the preceding sentence declares an employee shall be entitled to and the ‘first thirty days after an injury’, during which it is there said he shall be so entitled. The ‘services and aids' will be so referred to hereafter. The quoted language has been contained in the Act since the enactment of P.L.1919, Chap. 238, referred to hereafter as ‘the 1919 Act’, where the services and aids were reenumerated instead of being referred to by a collective phrase. Section 10. It is now found in R.S.1944, Chap. 26, Sec. 9, with immaterial changes.

The employee of the present proceedings, Donald J. Simpson, was injured so severely, while working as a welder in the employ of Bath Iron Works Corporation, that complete paralysis from the waist down resulted.

In the period commencing November 28, 1941, and ending April 8, 1948, compensation was paid to him, or accrued in his favor, aggregating the maximum amount of $6,000, payable to him under the Act, and his employer, or its insurer, paid out in addition thereto a substantial sum in excess of $100 for services and aids to him, the exact amount of which is not disclosed in the record. The settlement receipt given the employer, or its insurer, by the employee, acknowledging that the full sum of $6,000 had been paid to him, is dated June 26, 1948. During the period commencing April 6, 1948 and ending May 24, 1948, the employee paid money, and incurred charges, for services and aids, and for living expenses, all of which he and a nurse, supplying some of them, considered payable by his employer. When they were not paid, petitions were filed by the employee and the nurse, appropriate for having the amount payable therefor determined by the Commission, if its authority to act in connection therewith had not terminated. Awards of $39.69 and $105 were made thereon, covering a part of each claim, the amounts in excess being disallowed as representing ‘the ordinary expense of living’ or as not representing expenses the employee ‘would not have had if he had had no injury.’

The importance of the principle involved cannot be measured by the amount of money in issue. This is manifest when consideration is given to the claims of the parties. The petitioners assert that the Commission has authority to enlarge the period of time during which an employee shall be entitled to services and aids, and the amount to be paid there for, without limit, except as the latter may be controlled by the words ‘reasonable and proper’ in the first sentence of Section 9 of the Act, references in the sentence carrying the language to be construed to ‘the nature of the injury or the process of recovery’, and an overall provision in Section 32 that no ‘petition of any kind, except for review of incapacity, may be filed more than seven years following an accident.’ The employer asserts that the authority terminates as to each employee when he has been paid the maximum amount of compensation payable to him.

The petitions ground their claim on the declaration of Section 8 of the Act, that an employee: ‘shall be paid compensation and furnished medical and other services'; the references to ‘compensation and medical benefits', ‘compensation or other benefits', ‘compensation or medical benefits', ‘compensation and benefits' and ‘compensation or benefits' in Sections 15, 17, 24 and 27 of the Act, and of P.L.1929, Chap. 300, referred to hereafter as ‘the 1929 Act’, by contrast with the references in the corresponding sections of the 1919 Act, Sections 13, 8, 26 and 28, to ‘compensation’ alone; and particularly a change made in Section 9 of the 1919 Act, with which Section 10 of the 1929 Act compares, whereby the provision that no ‘compensation except’ services and aids should be paid during a waiting period was changed to one that ‘compensation’ should begin at a stated time after incapacity. Special emphasis is laid on the fact that this Court in Melcher's Case, 125 Me. 426, 134 A. 542, said by way of dictum, on September 28, 1926, that money paid by an employer for services and aids must be considered as compensation because Section 9 of the 1919 Act, then effective, referred to them as such, and that, thereafter, the 1929 Act made it plain that such expenditures do not constitute a part of the maximum compensation payable to an employee.

Authorities are cited, both in the Commission decision and in the petitioners' brief, to support such a construction, and they would be adequate for the purpose if authority on the point was needed. It is not. Those authorities, without distinguishing between those cited by the Commission and the petitioners, are Petraska v. National Acme Co. et al., 95 Vt. 76, 113 A. 536; Industrial Commission et al. v. Hammond, 77 Colo. 414, 236 P. 1006; Cardillo et al. v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., 69 App. D.C. 330, 101 F.2d 254; Morris v. Laughlin Chevrolet Co. et al., 217 N.C. 428, 8 S.E.2d 484, 128 A.L.R. 132, 136; and an...