Orinda Properties Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission

KNIGHT, J.

On March 9, 1927, the Industrial Accident Commission awarded the respondent Doran compensation for a permanent impairment of the function of the left wrist, which the Commission found had resulted from an accident occurring on July 3, 1925, while Doran was in the employ of the petitioner Orinda Properties Company, the compensability of which the petitioner insurance company at that time recognized. Petitioners now seek to have the award annulled, claiming that the evidence fails to support the Commission’s findings that the impairment to Doran’s wrist was due to the injury of July 3, 1925, and that his claim was barred by the provisions of the statute and by his own laches.

The following facts appear from the record: On June 4, 1925, Doran was hired as a laborer at Orinda, California, by the Orinda Properties Company, and on July 3, 1925, sustained a fracture of the left minor wrist by falling from a roof. Said injury caused total disability up to and including September 9, 1925, during which period Doran was given medical treatment by Dr. Cuttle of Oakland, and was compensated therefor by the petitioner insurance company. On December 3, 1925, Doran severed his employment with the Orinda Properties Company and went to San Diego, working there at odd jobs for six months. He then proceeded to Lafayette, California, where, on June 8, 1926, he entered the employ of Twohy Bros., bending steel. During this latter employment and on November 3, 1926, he sprained this same wrist while cranking a gas engine. He was treated for a period of three and a half weeks by Dr. Holcomb, during which treatment X-ray pictures were taken of the wrist, and it was discovered that the wrist was permanently impaired as the result of a previous injury, and Doran was so informed.

Within a week thereafter Doran applied to the Commission for an adjustment of his claim against petitioners upon the ground that the permanent disability to his wrist from which he was then suffering and which had been revealed to him for the first time by the X-ray pictures taken by Dr. Holcomb was the result of the injury of July 3, 1925. He was examined by Dr. Harbaugh, assistant medical director of the Commission, whose written report, dated December 1, 1926, was filed with the Commission, showing a permanent impairment in the motion and grasping power of the wrist. The next day Doran filed the present petition to obtain compensation for the permanent injury. Petitioners denied liability therefor, and at the hearing, which took place on December 16, 1926, Doran testified in answer to questions propounded by the referee that in addition to the two injuries to his wrist above mentioned, he had sprained the same wrist about twenty years before, but that he was laid off as a result of it only two or three days; that he received no medical attention at the time, and that afterwards his wrist was as “good or better” than the right wrist; that thereafter he had performed all kinds of hard work with it, in shipyards and in handling structural steel, and it had never given him any trouble until it was broken on July 3, 1925. So far as the record shows the only additional proof adduced at the hearing relating to Doran’s permanent disability consisted of the report of Dr. Harbaugh, which, after reciting the history of the case with reference to the fracture on July 3, 1925, and the sprain in November, 1926, stated: “X-ray pictures show evidence of an old fracture of a certain small bone of the wrist”; and the report concluded: “It seems to me that the man has some permanent disability with reference to the injury in July. ...”