Hannan v. Good Samaritan Hospital

471 P.2d 831, 4 Or. App. 178, 1970 Ore. App. LEXIS 427
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedJune 11, 1970
StatusPublished
Cited by121 cases

This text of 471 P.2d 831 (Hannan v. Good Samaritan Hospital) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hannan v. Good Samaritan Hospital, 471 P.2d 831, 4 Or. App. 178, 1970 Ore. App. LEXIS 427 (Or. Ct. App. 1970).

Opinions

[180]*180SCHWAB, C. J.

We are again required to review a compensation claim in which the parties disputing the nature and extent of claimant’s disability have wended their weary way to this court at considerable expense in time and money, not only to them, but also to the state. The number of briefs we have received from claimants and direct responsibility employers, arguing not only the issues of the individual cases, but the proper scope of judicial review, lead us to discuss the history and effect of the present Workmen’s Compensation Law before embarking on a review of the case at hand.

Stated in simplified terms, workmen’s compensation coverage provides a system of compensation for occupational injury and disease without regard to negligence. For many years prior to 1965 an employer had the choice of obtaining workmen’s compensation coverage from the state or rejecting that coverage and subjecting himself to the unlimited liability of the Employer’s Liability Act as the price of being free from the duty to compensate a workman for injuries not caused by the employer’s negligence. If an employer elected to purchase the protection available from the state the injured workman received compensation even absent negligence on the part of anyone, but was in turn precluded from bringing an action against his employer for the employer’s negligence. Under the pre-1965 system, an award was made by the State Industrial Accident Commission to the claimant-workman. If he was not satisfied he had a right to a jury trial at the circuit court level. At that trial he produced witnesses; the commission produced witnesses, the court instructed the jury on the applicable law, the jury returned its verdict which was reduced [181]*181to judgment, and the scope of review on appeal was no broader than that in any other action at law. The parties were entitled to only one trial on the facts. Although the jury’s verdict was not directly in the form of dollars, it was in a form convertible into dollars by statutory formulae.

When certain peculiarities of verbiage are stripped away, a jury trial in a workmen’s compensation ease was not unlike a jury trial in any other personal injury case in so far as it determined the nature and extent of injuries and the amount of compensation.

There has been much criticism of the American system of jury trial of personal injury cases. One of the most oft-repeated criticisms has been that juries are too prone to display undue sympathy for injured claimants and thus give money to those who are not entitled to any, and to others more money than warranted by their injuries. This may or may not be so in so far as individual juries and individual cases are concerned. However, it is interesting to note that as a matter of common knowledge, at least in the metropolitan areas of Oregon, for many years past a large number of automobile liability insurers defending personal injury claims have demanded their right to trial by jury- — even though many plaintiffs, on the advice of experienced counsel, have offered to waive jury and submit their claims to a trial judge sitting without a jury. The same has been true of the Oregon State Highway Division which commonly insists on its right to trial by jury when it seeks to acquire property by means of condemnation proceedings.

As is pointed out in Coday v. Willamette Tug & Barge Co., 250 Or 39, 440 P2d 224 (1968), the legislative history of the 1965 compensation law vividly [182]*182tells the story of the struggle between the forces that wanted to preserve the pre-1965 system and those that wanted to go to a “three-way” system which gave private insurance carriers and direct responsibility employers the right to provide workmen's compensation coverage and still reserve to the employer protection from unlimited liability. Those who wanted to preserve the old system were greatly concerned with saving the right of the claimant to de novo trial by a jury. Those who wanted to get into the compensation business were apparently fearful of the results of a jury trial system on the costs to them. Out of this struggle came a trial and appeal procedure based, so far as we can perceive, not on the principle, either of administrative or judicial determination, but on a compromise of those conflicting principles — a compromise which in a sense demeans both the judicial and the administrative processes.

Regardless of the number of standards the human mind has so far devised, formulae for valuing injuries in terms of dollars are at best imprecise. For example, pain is subjective. Even though we say only disability is compensable, that pain and suffering are not, pain governs movement, and movement affects degree of disability. In many instances the type of claim which results in litigation under the Workmen’s Compensation Law, like many claims arising out of automobile and other types of accidents, must be valued by application, not only of law, rules of evidence and logic, but also by application of experience, intuition, philosophy | and probably other factors.

The conflicting economic and social pressures! focused on workmen’s compensation claims, coupled I with the imprecision inherent in adjudicating the typel [183]*183of workmen’s compensation claim that is most frequently litigated, could very well lead to the conclusion that the jury had a unique value in disposing of such claims. By its makeup the jury is peculiarly immune from external pressures. Its 12 people are more likely than a full-time professional entity to reflect a cross-section of philosophies and experiences. Having reached its decision on a combination of factors, objective and subjective, a jury is not then called upon to justify its findings by articulating precise and rational reasons as the basis of its decision.

By the foregoing we do not mean to imply that the only suitable means of litigating compensation claims is trial by jury. We do believe that granting four de novo hearings as a matter of right is not a desirable alternative.

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Bluebook (online)
471 P.2d 831, 4 Or. App. 178, 1970 Ore. App. LEXIS 427, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hannan-v-good-samaritan-hospital-orctapp-1970.