Ortner v. Zenith Carburetor Co.

175 N.W. 122, 207 Mich. 610, 1919 Mich. LEXIS 445
CourtMichigan Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 22, 1919
DocketDocket No. 27
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 175 N.W. 122 (Ortner v. Zenith Carburetor Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Michigan Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ortner v. Zenith Carburetor Co., 175 N.W. 122, 207 Mich. 610, 1919 Mich. LEXIS 445 (Mich. 1919).

Opinion

Steere, J.

For some time before October 16, 1915, plaintiff was employed by defendant Zenith Carburetor Company in Detroit, his work consisting mostly of grinding carburetors. His compensation was approximately $17.35 per week. On the morning of that date the third finger of his left hand was crushed in a drill at which he was working. It is undisputed that this injury arose out of and in the course of his employment. The carburetor company was operating under [611]*611the workmen’s compensation law, carrying insurance with the defendant Standard Accident Insurance Company. Report was duly made of the accident to the State industrial accident board and proceedings had in accordance with statutory requirements and prescribed regulations of the board. An agreement was entered into between the parties for compensation, which was approved by the board and parties so notified. That adjustment, made with the approval of the board, was carried out by weekly payments, with medical and hospital attendance provided plaintiff until he resumed his employment. Blood poisoning, or infection of the wound, had resulted from the injury and he “complained of general soreness in different joints of his body” for some time. He returned to his former employment in April, 1916, and on the 28th of that month signed a final receipt “in settlement of compensation under the Michigan workmen’s, compensation law, for all injuries received by me on or about the 16th of October, 1915, while in the employ of the Zenith Carburetor Company.” This receipt was filed with the industrial accident board as required by its practice, together with a final report of the accident.

At the time plaintiff returned to work he had, as described by the physician who attended him, “an anchylosed distal joint of the third left finger and a deformity of the distal of the fourth or little finger.” This may have affected his skill or ability to perform certain work, but he was given employment by' the carburetor company of a character somewhat similar to that in which he was employed before his injury at the same wages and remained in its employ for two years.

So far as shown by any records of the industrial accident board the rights of the parties in relation to that accident had been fully settled and adjudicated, payment made in full and final settlement receipt filed [612]*612with the board by May 3, 1916. Nothing further occurred and no further claim was made to the board in regard to the matter until October 14, 1918, when a petition was filed in plaintiff’s behalf for the board to reopen his case. In due course of proceedings defendants answered and a hearing on said petition was set for November 19, 1918, at. which time no one appeared in behalf of plaintiff and an order was entered by the board dismissing the petition.

■ On January 22, 1919, plaintiff filed a second petition asking for a rehearing, which defendants also 'answered. Following the practice in such cases the parties took whatever testimony of witnesses they desired and the same was returned to the board, followed by a hearing thereon. Upon such hearing, and against objection of defendants, the industrial accident board, on May 6,1919, entered an order granting plaintiff’s petition and required that defendants then pay plaintiff compensation at the rate of $6.61 per week, “as provided in the agreement approved December 3, 1915, from May 6, 1918, the date on which he stopped working for said respondent, to May 6,1919, a period of 52 weeks, there being due and payable on the latter date the sum of three hundred and forty-three and 72-100 dollars ($343.72), and subsequent to May 6, 1919, that he be paid the same weekly compensation during the period of his total disability,” etc.

No findings were made by the board beyond the statement in its order “that said applicant has been totally disabled as a result of the accidental personal injury he sustained on October 16, 1915, since May 6, 1918, when he stopped work for respondent, up to the present time.”

Plaintiff’s witnesses were himself and three physicians, Dr. Stockwell, who attended him during his disability after the accident of October, 1915, until he [613]*613resumed work; Dr. Webber, whom plaintiff consulted the latter part of May, 1918, and was treated by for some time, and Dr. Sigel, to whom plaintiff went after Dr. Webber said he could not do anything further for him and advised him to consult another physician.

It was shown by undisputed testimony of the physicians that plaintiff’s physical disability after he stopped work in May, 1918, was due to a cancer which had recently developed in his private parts and rapidly progressed until at the time of hearing he was pronounced by them fatally afflicted.

The assignments of error contained in defendants’ petition for writ of certiorari involve the following contentions:

“First. Under the law there was no jurisdiction in the industrial accident board to reopen this matter (which had been finally determined in May, 1916) upon applicant’s petition filed in January, 1919.
“Second. Upon this record there is no evidence tending to support the order complained of in finding that the applicant’s disability in 1918 was the result of accidental injuries received by him in the course of his employment by the Zenith Carburetor Company.”

Of the second it is to be noted that all three of the physicians who professionally attended plaintiff and were called by him as witnesses agreed that cancer, with which he was afflicted during and after May, 1918, is a germ disease resulting from “streptococcus infection,” which none of them claimed resulted from or had any direct connection with the injury to his hand in 1915. But Dr. Webber in answer to questions of plaintiff’s counsel was favorable to the theory that plaintiff’s reduced vitality and run down physical condition imputable to his accident in 1915 would, as he expressed it, “prevent him from having a cure to those parts down there and consequently the prolonged irritation would result in a cancerous infection,” thereby purporting to trace a causal connection between the [614]*614injury to the hand in 1915 and what he'describes as a “streptococcus infection underneath the foreskin” (in 1918), the development of which into a cancer “comes from irritation, continued irritation,” and “especially where it is connected with the mucous membrane, grows fairly rapidly.”

As to when he became afflicted with a cancer, plaintiff testified that the first time he had any trouble in his private parts was when he went to see Dr. Webber in May, 1918, which he subsequently modified by the statement that a sore first manifested itself there in November, 1917, and began to swell in February or March, 1918, paining him more or less since Christmas, and his condition became such that he had to quit work on May 4, 1918; but went back on the 14th or 15th and worked two days more when he could not stand it any longer and went to see Dr. Webber on May 18th, at which time he was in very bad physical condition. He then told the doctor that some one in the boarding house was playing a joke on him by placing something on the sheets in his bed which got upon his private parts, starting an irritation and swelling, and, as Dr. Webber states he understood it, “was not laid up or, that is, he, did not have any) trouble ,for any length of time.”

Dr.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
175 N.W. 122, 207 Mich. 610, 1919 Mich. LEXIS 445, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ortner-v-zenith-carburetor-co-mich-1919.