Massachusetts Bonding & Insurance v. Pillsbury

SLOSS, J.

This is a writ of

certiorari

to review an award of the Industrial Accident Commission allowing to an injured employee compensation in the sum of $175.34 and in addition thereto the reasonable value of medical and surgical services rendered to him, the amount of the claim for such services to be thereafter approved by the commission.

The petitioner, Massachusetts Bonding and Insurance Company, had issued a policy of insurance to the employer.

The various constitutional objections to the validity of the Workmen’s Compensation, Insurance and Safety Act have been determined against the petitioner’s contentions by our recent decision in

Western Indemnity Co.

v.

Pillsbury,

(S. F. No. 7134),

ante,

p. 686, [151 Pac. 398].

Two other points are presented by the record.

1. The applicant, L. D. Taylor, was employed by the Kissel Kar Branch as a machinist working upon automobiles. In the course of his work, the little finger of his left hand was caught in a gear, and the end of the finger was crushed. He was treated by a surgeon, who amputated the finger at the distal joint. The commission found that by reason of his injury the applicant had sustained a permanent partial disability equalling two and three-fourths per cent of a total disability and entitling him to disability indemnity lasting for a period of eleven weeks from the fifteenth day after he left work.

The petitioner contends that the act does not authorize an allowance for a partial permanent disability where the proportion of disability to total disability is less than ten per cent. Section 15 of the act fixes the scale or schedule of compensation to be allowed. The section first provides for temporary disability whether total or partial. Permanent disabilities are covered by subdivision 5, as follows: “(5) If the accident causes permanent disability, the percentage of disability to total disability shall be determined and the disability indemnity computed and allowed as follows: for a ten per cent disability, sixty-five per cent of the average weekly earnings, for a period of forty weeks; for a twenty per cent disability, sixty-five per cent of the average weekly earnings