Frankfort General Ins. Co. v. Pillsbury

SLOSS, J.

Certiorari to review an award of the accident commission allowing compensation to Thomas Immel for injuries received while in the employ of the American Beet Sugar Company. The petitioner is the insurance carrier, and was substituted for the employer.

Immel was a carpenter and cabinet-maker and had been employed by the sugar company in its factory at Oxnard for some years. His injury consisted in the loss of the greater part of the index finger of the left hand. That the facts proven and found make out a ease of liability under the terms of the act is not questioned. The main controversy turns on the amount of the award.

The case is one of partial permanent disability. The commission found that" the percentage of disability was twenty and one-fourth per cent, and in accordance with the provisions of section 15, (b) 2, (6), and (7), of the Workmen’s Compensation Act made an award of sixty-five per cent of Immel’s average weekly earnings for a period of eighty-one weeks. The average weekly earnings were found to be $23.55 and the total amount of the award was $1,239.30.

The proceeding was twice heard by the commission, a rehearing having been granted after the first award. Following the rehearing the original award was confirmed.

Upon the first hearing the application was submitted upon a written stipulation of the parties. This stipulation stated, among other things, that Immel was sixty-five years of age; that in consequence of the injury his finger had been amputated between the knuckle and the proximal joint; that he had returned to work twenty-six days after the accident, having lost twenty days of working time. The stipulation further stated “that his main trouble through the loss of the finger is that he has not yet become used to using his second finger to pick up small things instead of the first finger. That so far as he knows he is able to do as much work as he did before he was hurt, in the course of a day’s work. That there is no difference in the quality of his work since he was hurt,

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and that he does just as good work as he did before he lost the finger. That the only trouble he has at this time is that the stump pains him at times and is tender, and, as stated before, that he has some difficulty in picking up small articles. That he receives forty cents an hour, which is the same rate at which he was paid before he was hurt.”