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crease the economic opportunity of the injured man, and the laws of a number of States make provision for compensation in such cases. Under the Illinois law an award for disfigurement is permissible in cases in which no claim is made for permanent partial or total disability. In a case in which the injured man made no claim for disability, but did ask an award on account of disfigurement, it was held by the supreme court that no account should be taken, in determining the amount of the benefits to be awarded, of any other effects of the injury than those producing disfigurement. (Stubbs v. Industrial Board, 117 N. E. 419.)

An amendment of 1916 to the law of New York authorizes the industrial commission, in its discretion, to allow awards in cases of serious facial or head disfigurement, and fixes a maximum. The court of appeals of the State recently affirmed an award in behalf of a woman whose scalp and face were torn by the catching of her hair on a revolving shaft, saying that the amendment in question had so far modified the original basis of the law, which was to compensate for disability to work. There was no award for loss of earning power, that not being ascertainable at the time, and the question was held open. It was held that concurrent awards might be made, one for loss of earning power and one for the facial or head disfigurement, but that it should be clear that the latter did not include any allowance for the former; and as this appeared to have been safeguarded in the instant case, it was held that the award should stand. (Erickson v. Preuss, 119 N. E. 555.)

Accidental injury as proximate cause.-The cases that arise under this head are complicated by the fact that a prior existing condition or a subsequent intervening event appears to modify the normal consequences of the condition involved in the industry and the accidents that may result therefrom. Thus where a scaffold was properly constructed to secure the safety of workmen in normal conditions of health, the Supreme Court of Michigan held that one who fell in an epileptic fit, receiving fatal injuries, was not within the act, since the injury did not arise out of the employment, the illness being the proximate cause of death. (Van Gorder e. Packard Motor Car Co., 162 N. W. 107.) Some emphasis is given to the fact in the foregoing case that the employer was not aware of the liability of the employee to such fits, but in a case considered by the Supreme Court of California, involving practically identical circumstances, an award was denied without reference to the fact of ignorance or knowledge, simply on the ground that the injury arose from the fact that the injured man was an epileptic, and did not arise out of the employment. (Brooker e. Industrial Accident Commission, 168 Pac. 126.) A distinction is drawn between cases of this nature and cases where the injury

"though apparently caused by the idiopathic condition of the employee, is due in part also to the overexertion of the employee in performing his work, or to the nature of the work or the appliances furnished to him with which to work, or to the lack of proper safeguards against the ordinary dangers of the place of work, the injury being sometimes greater because of his idiopathic condition.” In this connection may be noted a ruling of the Supreme Court of New York (Santacroce v. Sag Harbor Brick Works, 169 N. Y. Supp. 695), affirming an award in behalf of a workman who had previously been in good health, but who suffered at the time from "an attack of vertigo or some similar disorder" and fell from a height of 15 feet; it was here held that the dizziness, fall, and injury were all due to the place and nature of the employment.

Nothing, therefore, appears in the foregoing decisions to indicate any purpose of departing from the position that "the employer takes his employee subject to the physical conditions he is in at the time he enters the employment;" instead, they only draw a line between injuries that are merely aggravated in their consequences by reason of preexisting conditions and those which could in no wise be reasonably anticipated as a consequence of the employment in itself.

Subsequent happenings were involved in a case in which a man fractured his knee in October and was making normal recovery, when he slipped the following March, loosening the bone, and again fell in July while waiting to receive his crutches after getting out of a wagon and received injuries. The contention was raised that no compensation should be allowed for the prolonged disability resulting from these falls, but the Supreme Court of Michigan held that there was nothing to show willful misconduct, that the injured man was apparently doing nothing contrary to his doctor's orders, and that the infirmities from which he suffered were the consequences of his original injury, so that payment should be continued, even though, barring mishaps, recovery should have been complete at an earlier date. (Cook v. Hoertz & Son, 161 N. W. 464.)

A somewhat unusual distinction was drawn by the Superior Court of Rhode Island (Gross case, 1917), which held that an injury accelerating an existing disease was compensable only for the period of the disability estimated to be due to the injury, and made an award of six months' benefits where there was actually a fatal termination, when death might have been little if any delayed had there been no accident. (See Pintar case, etc., Bul. No. 203, p. 203.) On the other hand, the Supreme Court of Michigan sustained an award in the full amount for the loss of an eye, where the injured eye was, in fact, so defective before the accident as to be capable only of distinguishing light and seeing approaching objects. It was said that the law did not specify a normal eye as the basis of awards,

though conceding that a mere sightless organ might be considered no eye at all. (Purchase v. Grand Rapids Refrigerator Co., 160 N. W. 391; see ruling of Connecticut commissioner, Bul. 203, p. 205.)

COVERAGE.

The question of coverage, or the exclusion or inclusion of designated groups of employment or occupation, is one that is disposed of quite differently in the different laws, as has been pointed out in the analysis and summary statements of provisions. Experience under the acts has tended to a broader inclusion by amendatory legislation in a number of cases, while on the other hand the difficulty attendant upon establishing different systems of relief in cases of the identical. employment of railroad employees engaged in interstate and intrastate commerce operates to eliminate entirely employees engaged in the movement of trains from the scope of compensation acts. The cases under this head turned so largely on the specific wording of the provisions of the acts that they are of less general interest, but a few of them will be noted.

Domestic and farm labor.-The Appellate Court of Indiana rules that an employee engaged as a part of the crew of a thrashing machine which went about from farm to farm thrashing oats and wheat at a fixed price per bushel paid to the owner of the machine was not a farm laborer within the exemptions of the Indiana statute. The fact that the farmer himself rarely undertakes the work of thrashing, and that thrashing and milling are industrially distinguishable from farming operations, was held to sustain the view that such work should not be excluded from the operations of the law, even though the machine is moved about from farm to farm and operates on them. (In re Boyer, 117 N. E. 507.)

Hazardous employments.-The law of Illinois classes as hazardous the work of building, maintaining, repairing, etc., any structure. The supreme court of the State held window cleaning to be a work of maintenance within the meaning of the act, and sustained an award in favor of a claimant for the death of a workman employed by a window-cleaning company. (Chicago Cleaning Co. v. Industrial Board, 118 N. E. 989.)

It is of interest to note that the law of New York, the most important one using hazard as a basis, has practically abolished this test by making the law apply to all unenumerated undertakings in which four or more persons are employed, or to state the matter differently, fellow service is declared to be a basis of hazard, and no longer an employer's defense.

Casual employment.-As noted in Bulletin 203 in the case of hazardous employments, so in the matter of casual employments, certain absurdities in the laws as they have developed by experience have

led to amendments enlarging the scope and clarifying the purpose of the acts. Of principal interest, perhaps, under this head, is the rectification of the conditions which arose under the New York statute as set forth in the case of Bargey v. Macaroni Co. (See Bul. 203, p. 215.) The impropriety of excluding from the benefits of the act a carpenter engaged in making alterations and repairs in a factory building, merely because his employer was not engaged in the business of erection and repair of buildings, was too obvious to remain without remedy. The law of the State was therefore amended in 1916 so as to include persons engaged in any of the hazardous occupations named in the act who are in the service of an employer whose principal business is that of carrying on or conducting a hazardous employment within the act, eliminating the earlier provision that the employee must be himself at the time "engaged in a hazardous employment in the service of an employer carrying on or conducting the same," thus making it possible to compensate an employee in a hazardous occupation differing from that ordinarily engaged in by employees of the employer in his usual course of trade or business. A case practically identical with the Bargey case in its circumstances arose under the amended law, when a bricklayer employed by a lithographing and printing company to repair the walls of its plant, was injured. The fact that an amendment had been recommended by the industrial commission of the State so as to "cover employees called in to do construction and repair work as in the Bargey case," was referred to by the court in its opinion, and it was held that the injured man was entitled to benefits even though the work in which he was engaged was entirely different from the regular business of the establishment. The court below had denied compensation on the ground that the employer did not carry on the employment of bricklaying for pecuniary gain. This view was rejected by the court of appeals as tending to nullify entirely the effect of the amendment, the court saying also that the employer was carrying on a designated hazardous business for pecuniary gain, and that the injury sustained by the workman was in the service of the company, which was obligated to maintain a suitable plant for the proper conduct of its business; and since the employment in which the bricklayer claimant was engaged was "incidental and requisite to the business carried on by the company," under the law as amended he was clearly entitled to compensation. (Do-e v. Moehle Lithographic Co., 221 N. Y., 401, 117 N. E. 616.) Even before the amendment of 1916 the court had gone so far as to say, in a case where a handy man was putting in a shelf in a manufacturing establishment, that if "an employee is injured while performing an act which is fairly incidental to the prosecution of a business, and appropriate in carrying it forward and providing for its needs, he or his dependents are not to be barred from recovery because such act

is not a step wholly embraced in the precise and characteristic process or operation which has been made the basis of the group in which employment is claimed." (Larsen v. Paine Drug Co., 218 N. Y. 252, 112 N. E. 725.)

The Pennsylvania statute was construed less favorably as to this point by the supreme court of that State than by the State board. (See Bul. 203, pp. 213, 214.) In the case Marsh v. Groner (102 Atl. 127), the court denied compensation to a plasterer who was engaged to do several days' work on a residence on which the work of remodeling had been carried on for some months, the rejection being based on the view that the employer was not engaged in the business of building in the sense intended by the law. One justice dissented, saying that the majority had changed the law from "the regular course of the business" to "the course of the regular business" of the employer, thus unduly narrowing it.

The Supreme Court of Michigan, also, while recognizing that it is usual for the owner of a hotel to have his rooms painted and decorated occasionally, set aside an award in favor of a painter and decorator, holding that such work was not a part of the business of keeping a hotel within the meaning of the State law. (Holbrook v. Olympia Hotel Co., 166 N. W. 876.)

Perhaps even more unsatisfactory than the foregoing is a decision of the Illinois Supreme Court (two justices dissenting) declaring casual the employment of a laborer on a highway who was killed by a dynamite explosion while assisting in the removal of stumps. The work of blasting was to continue but a comparatively short time, and while the general work on the highway at the time was held not to be hazardous within the meaning of the act, the work of blasting was declared to be so; but this work was said to be " a mere casual or incidental employment in connection with the matter of grading and repairing the road, this bringing the workman within the class of casual employees who are not included within the act;" this though the workman was regularly and continuously employed in the general undertaking. (McLaughlin v. Industrial Board of Illinois, 117 N. E. 819.)

This is in contrast with the position of the Supreme Court of Minnesota (State ex rel. Nienaber v. District Court, 165 N. W. 268), which held that the driver of a street sprinkler, who went to the aid of the driver of a coal wagon at his request, and was injured while so aiding him, was an employee of the coal dealer, since, though the employment was but casual, it was in the course of the employer's business and within the act.

Other exclusions.-Inasmuch as compensation is to be paid by the employer or his insurer to the employee, the question of who are employees is essential. The compensation board of Pennsylvania

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