Evans v. Rheem Manufacturing Co.

Per Curiam. Appellant Evans was denied workmen’s compensation by the commission on the ground that he had not filed his claim “within one year after the beginning of his disability,” as Code (1951), Art. 101, Sec. 38, which controlled the case, required. 1 On appeal a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County found the claim had been filed in time. Judge Barrett entered a judgment notwithstanding the verdict. ³²⁰ Appellant was injured on December 29, 1952, when he was attempting to turn a heavy shear table which usually was turned mechanically. The table caught and he twisted his back and, he says, “felt the stinging in the lower part of my back.” He reported to the company nurse who gave him pills and salve for the massage of his back, as well as a company form for his supervisor to fill out.

He received daily heat treatments from the nurse for the next six or seven days, and also took very hot baths at home. Evans did not file his claim until October 11, 1955. In August of that year he found that on getting out of bed he could not stand on his right leg because of pain in his lower back. A company doctor advised him to stay home from work for three days.

He had not previously lost time from work because of the 1952 injury. In late September an orthopedic specialist took X-rays of his lower back and advised him he had a ruptured disc. Thereafter, he could not work for a six weeks’ period. Evans’ claim is that in 1939 he hurt his right shoulder playing baseball and that the pains and discomfort that followed his 1952 injury were in the upper back, so that his symptoms and discomforts in his lower back and leg did not make it apparent to him, and were not such as should have put him on notice that they were caused by the accident of 1952.

We think it entirely clear from the record that Evans cannot have failed to know that the industrial accident produced results which, from 1952 to 1955, manifested themselves in symptoms which required him to relate them to that accident. His baseball hurt had never produced other than shoulder and neck pains from 1939 to 1952. Immediately following the accident in 1952 he was treated on six or seven consecutive days. Several months later he complained to a company doctor of, among other things, “discomfort in the low back.” The doctor’s report shows that then only the lumbar region of the back was sensitive to touch.

He admits that two doctors told him he