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232 Mass. 515

Pass's Case

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1919-03-31

<p>Workmen’s Compensation Act, Findings of Industrial Accident Board.</p> <p>In proceedings under the workmen’s compensation act, findings of fact made by the Industrial Accident Board have the same effect as a verdict of a jury in an action at law or a finding of a trial judge who has heard a case without a jury, and such findings must stand if there is any evidence to support them.</p>

Relies on Pigeon's Case · McCarthy's Case · Fitzgibbons's Case

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1919-03-31

How this case has been cited

Cited by 49 later decisions — most recently April 1939 · most notably Johnson's Case (1922), Chisholm's Case (1921)

49 state decisions

350191919201930decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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By the Court.

¶1This case comes before us by appeal from a decree affirming an adverse decision by the Industrial Accident Board, which adopted and confirmed the finding of the single member. The finding was (1) that the statutory notice required by the act had not been given, (2) that it had not been shown that either the association, the subscribers or their agent had notice of the injury, (3) that the claim for compensation had not been filed as required by the act, (4) that the failure to file the claim was not due to mistake or other reasonable cause, and (5) that the employee had failed to prove that he received a personal injury which arose out of and in the course of his employment. Any one of these findings is fatal to the employee’s contentions.

¶2*516These all were questions of fact. No law is involved. It has been held from the very first under the workmen’s compensation act that the findings of fact of the Industrial Accident Board stand if there is any evidence to support them. Pigeon’s Case, 216 Mass. 51.

¶3It is as futile for parties to appeal from a decision'of the board on questions of fact as it would be to except to an adverse verdict of a jury or an unfavorable finding by a judge.

¶4It is enough to say that the board was at liberty to refuse to give credit to any part of the evidence not in their opinion entitled to credit. The case is within the authority of numerous recent decisions. Fitzgibbons’s Case, 230 Mass. 473. Moran’s Case, 230 Mass. 500. Knight’s Case, 231 Mass. 142. McCarthy’s Case, 231 Mass. 259. Berman’s Case, ante, 453.

¶5 Decree affirmed.

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