JOHNSON & KEMNITZ DRILLING CO. v. LIGGETT

JOHNSON & KEMNITZ DRILLING CO. v. LIGGETT
1933 OK 343
22 P.2d 913
164 Okla. 54
Case Number: 23875
Decided: 05/31/1933
Supreme Court of Oklahoma

JOHNSON & KEMNITZ DRILLING CO.
v.
LIGGETT

Syllabus

¶0 Master and Servant--Workmen's Compensation--Review of Awards--Conclusiveness of Findings of Fact.
Where there is any competent evidence reasonably tending to support the findings of fact of the Industrial Commission, the same will not be disturbed on review by the Supreme Court.

Original action in the Supreme Court by the Johnson & Kemnitz Drilling Company et al. to review award of the State Industrial Commission in favor of T. R. Liggett, claimant. Affirmed.

Randolph, Haver, Shirk & Bridges, for petitioners.
Ben C. Arnold, Leo J. Williams, and M. J. Parmenter, for respondents.

BAYLESS, J.

¶1 This is an appeal by petitioners, Johnson & Kemnitz Drilling Company, the employer, and Travelers Insurance Company, the insurance carrier, from an award in favor of the claimant, T. R. Liggett, an employee of the drilling company. While Liggett was working for said company he received an accidental injury in the course of his employment and arising out of the employment when a water glass on the boiler exploded and struck him in the left eye. There is testimony that the right eye was scalded by the escaping steam. This happened December 2, 1927, and as a result of the injury to the left eye there was a total loss of vision for which Liggett was paid 100 weeks' compensation. April 19, 1932, Liggett filed a motion to reopen the case on the ground of change of condition in that his right eye has since sustained a permanent partial loss of vision attributable to the original injury. Upon trial of this matter the Commission, after hearing testimony, found that Liggett has a loss of 30 per cent. of the vision of his right eye by a sympathetic condition caused by the injury to the left eye, and awarded compensation for 65 per cent. loss of vision, less what had already been paid. This appeal resulted.

¶2 We had somewhat a similar situation under consideration in the case of Skelly Oil Co. v. Skinner, 162 Okla. 150, 19 P.2d 548, and in answering a similar question raised in that case, we said:

"The answers raise several possibilities as to what he may have meant, but, when considered in connection with his direct testimony, seem to mean merely that he could not reduce the causation to a mathematical certainty, that it was his opinion. We cannot say, then, that there is no evidence in the record that the present loss of teeth is due to the original injury."

¶3 We, therefore, hold that there is some competent legal evidence in the record to support the finding of the Industrial Commission upon this point, and its award is therefore affirmed.