explaining that appellate review "should not infer from the absence of a finding on a given point that the question was resolved in favor of the party who prevailed below, for the point may have been overlooked."
How later courts described this case
- explaining that appellate review "should not infer from the absence of a finding on a given point that the question was resolved in favor of the party who prevailed below, for the point may have been overlooked."
- refusing to apply statutory amendments involving substantive rights to pending proceedings but applying amendments involving procedure where those amendments were enacted after date of injury but prior to the date the appeal to the Board was heard and decided
- detailing distinction between "substance" and "procedure," and declaring that a cause of action is a substantive right
- “When the fact finder in an administrative proceeding is required to set forth his findings in an adjudication, that adjudication must include all findings necessary to resolve the issues raised by the evidence and which are relevant to a decision”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
ROBERTS, Justice
(concurring and dissenting).
I agree that the order of the Commonwealth Court should be vacated, but I see no reason to remand the case to the Board.
A claimant under the Workmen’s Compensation Act must prove that he suffered an accident and that the ac *288 cident occurred in the course of his employment. Claimant has done this. There was an additional finding of fact that claimant had suffered a back injury fourteen years earlier. The Board considered this earlier injury too remote to be germane.
If the employer wished to deny liability for the accident by asserting that the injury was caused by the effects of the earlier accident, it was incumbent on it to produce evidence to support such a finding of fact. The employer has not done so. The referee and the Board had evidence of the earlier injury but made no finding of fact that it caused the present injury.
A compensable injury has been established. This conclusion has not been altered by any finding that it was caused by an earlier injury. I can see no reason to allow the employer to attempt again to prove that which he could not at the earlier opportunity.