Maryland Casualty Co. v. Sledge

46 S.W.2d 442
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 27, 1932
DocketNo. 2178
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 46 S.W.2d 442 (Maryland Casualty Co. v. Sledge) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Maryland Casualty Co. v. Sledge, 46 S.W.2d 442 (Tex. Ct. App. 1932).

Opinion

WALKER, J.

This was an action under the Workmen’s Compensation Act (Rev. St. 1925, arts. 8306 to S309, amended to 1930) by appellee against appellant, in the nature of an appeal from a final award of the Industrial Accident Board, to recover compensation as for total and permanent disability. The allegations of the petition and the nature of appellant’s answer will be reflected by the discussion of the as-• signments of error.-' The jury found that ap-pellee was injured on or about the 23d day of April, 1930, in the course of his employment with W. C. Wells in Beaumont, Jefferson county, Tex., which injuries resulted in his total permanent incapacity. The jury found further that appellee’s injury was the sole cause of his “disability to work and earn money,” and that manifest hardship and injustice would result to him if appellant failed to redeem its liability to him in a lump sum settlement. The jury further found that at the time of the trial appellee was not suffering from “injury and the effect and consequences of injuries to the fourth lumbar vertebra.” On the jury findings the court entered judgment upon additional findings made by him to the effect that appellee’s average weekly wage was $28 under section 1, subd. 3, of article 8309 (Rev. St.), and on his independent finding, together with the jury’s verdict,* allowed appellee compensation in a lump sum at the rate of $16.80 per week for a period of 401 weeks, making a total recovery of $5,121.57.

Appellant has not submitted propositions of law in its brief, but has related its arguments to the several assignments of error, fifteen in number. By the first, second, third, and fourth assignments of error the point is made that “the evidence wholly fails to show any permanent injury to plaintiff’s first lumbar vertebra and the muscles and ligaments of his back.” In alleging his injuries, appellee pleaded the facts of the accident, and that it resulted in “fracturing first lumbar vertebra and the muscles and ligaments of his back were bruised, sprained and torn and as. a result of which the plaintiff now has to wear a brace; that his legs, arms and hands have become permanently paralyzed from said injury.” On the extent of the disability resulting to him from his injuries, appellee testified:

“I have suffered some paralysis on account-of that1 injury; of a morning when I get up, ever since this brace was put on me and the ■-doctor let me up, of a morning when I get up my legs from my hips down are numb; audit generally takes from about nine till eleven o’clock before it goes plumb out of my legs. Of a night when I get to bed, it feels pretty good, but when I get up of a morning, my legs are plumb numb, and it has got to where when I catch hold of anything and squeeze it tight, I have to take my other' hand and break my fingers loose from it. I never was that way before in my life.
“The place in my back where I suffered from the injury is right back there (indicating). It just seems like all the time when I am up, going around, there is somebody taking a knife and just shoving in and prizing the joints in my back apart, or something; it just hurts-and aches all the time. I am not able to do any work now. I am not an educated man. I never went any higher than the fourth, grade in my life.”
‘/I was in that body east for three months,^ When he took the long cast off of me, from my ankle up to here under my arms, why, then for about two or three months I wore a cast from my waist up here. That’s when he started letting me walk around, and before my brace got here. That was from my hips to my arm pits. As to whether I have ever tried to do' anything without my brace, I will say that of a night several times when I get in the bed I take that brace off and catch myself and try to hold myself up, and it would just hurt so bad until I couldn’t dp it; I had to lie back down. I never do get up without putting that brace on. I set it by my bed and every morning before I get up I slip it under me and pull it up and then I can get up and go around. That is the only time I have experimented with removing the brace and working without my brace. Dr. Hart told me that I might eventually get all right, but -he said that I would have to wear that brace, and that some time I might get able to go without it, but he didn’t know.”
“Since I got up I have just been staying around home, in bed a good part of the time, because my back feels better when I am laying down than it does when I am up, going around, and if I go around too much in the day and walk around, up on my feet all day, of a night it hurts me so bad I can’t rest, and so I stay around home in the bed mighty near all the time. I have not attempted to do any work of any sort. I don’t think I could run a truck now, because when I am in a car, if they hit a' kind of a bad road— coming out of my house it is a dirt road for about a hundred yards to the highway, and when I am coming over that dirt road, the jar of that road hurts my back, and I know that I couldn’t stand to sit on a rough truck, because just the jar of á passenger ear hurts my back. I don’t believe that ⅝ massaging and easy work, and prudent massage of my back that finally I would be restored to normal condition; I ain’t going to say definitely, but I don’t believe so, because every night [444]*444whenever I get in bed and take off my brace my wife takes this Alcorub that Dr. Hart told her to use and rubs my back, and she rubs it sometimes 30 minutes at a time and it don’t seem to help it any. That would be for the muscles and the ligaments.”

Dr. E. T. Miller, the witness for appellee, testified as to the extent of appellee’s injury as follows: “It is reasonable to suppose in an injury of that kind the ligaments were all torn, and lacerated, and broken. The backbone is held in place by tendons and ligaments. If a lick is sufficient to break the bone, it would bruise the muscles and break, lacerate, and tear, the ligaments which hold the bones in place. As to the effect on a man of an injury such as Sledge received insofar as his being able to get out and do manual labor, I don’t think he will ever be able to do any manual labor again. I don’t think that a break of one of those vertebrae can be patched up in such a way that a man is normal. He has got a little infected process there now in one of those bones which will have to be curetted out before he will ever get well. There is a little hole there where the pus is coming out through the skin. Tou don’t have to have an X-ray to see that. In other words, it is something like a fistula from-the lower part of the bowels, the rectum. I cannot recall any injury to a back such as Sledge has received, where there has ever , been a permanent cure effected. I don’t think he can be cured permanently. The injury that he has is not likely to give away at any time and cause instant death or paralysis, but if that infection should travel into the spinal cord, it might cause very serious trouble. If he complains about paralysis on waking up in the mornings, that his legs are numb and that that usually lasts from nine to ten or eleven o’clock, that is no doubt caused by pressure by one of the vertebrae on the spinal cord. At every joint of the backbone there are nerves coming out from the spinal cord and going to various parts of the body. If those nerves become impinged that naturally results in some disorder to the body somewhere. In the place where Sledge’s back was broken the nerve which comes out of that particular place is the nerves which supply the muscles of the legs. That is the reason for the numbness and tingling and burning sensation.”

Dr. John A.

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Bluebook (online)
46 S.W.2d 442, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/maryland-casualty-co-v-sledge-texapp-1932.