Moore Shipbuilding Co. v. Industrial Accident Commision

NOURSE, J.

This is an original proceeding in

certiorari

to review an order of the Industrial Accident Commission awarding compensation to Charles Simmons. The facts of the case are that for about two months immediately prior to March 6 or 7, 1924, the applicant was employed as a burner of armor plate by the petitioner Moore Shipbuilding Company. From March 7 to March 10, 1924, he was not employed and on the latter date he entered the employ of the General Metal Supply Company, for which he worked as a burner until he was disabled by lead poisoning on March 21, 1924. The petitioner Aetna Life Insurance Company was the compensation carrier for its copetitioner during the entire period of the applicant's employment by that company and two other insurance companies were successively carriers for the General Metal Supply Company during his

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employment by that concern. A hearing was had before the respondent Commission on the application of the employee for compensation, and as a result of that hearing the respondent found that while employed as a burner by the

General Metal Supply Company

the applicant “contracted lead poisoning due to exposure of fumes containing lead in the course of his work.” The further finding was made that the liability for the compensation awarded to the applicant should be apportioned in accordance with the time worked by the employee “under exposure to lead,” and that the employee having worked forty-six days for the Moore Shipbuilding Company and eleven days for the General Metal Supply Company it was determined that the petitioner, Aetna Life Insurance Company, as carrier of the Moore Shipbuilding Company, should be held liable for 46.57 per cent of the total compensation awarded.

The attack of the petitioner upon the award is that it is wholly unsupported by the findings on the part of the Commission. The point is that the jurisdiction of the Commission to apportion compensation among several employers where an employee has contracted an occupational disease during the course of the several employments can be sustained only upon a finding that the disease which constituted the “injury” defined in subdivision 4 of section 3 of the Workmen’s Compensation Act (Stats. 1917, p. 831), as amended in Statutes 1919, page 911, existed at some stage of each prior employment. That is to say, that the power of the Commission to apportion the liability among several employers under the terms of the section cited is limited to a “ease of aggravation of any disease existing prior to any such injury.”