Industrial Indemnity Exchange v. Industrial Accident Commission

Respondent herein, Luigi Riccardi, on December 3, 1945, received an injury compensable under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, when a bandsaw with which he was working broke and a small piece of steel lodged in the wall of his heart between the right and left ventricles. It is impossible to remove this metal as the chances of Riccardi surviving such an operation would be only about 5 or 10 per cent. As a result there is a leakage of blood from one ventricle to the other and this puts such an extra burden on the heart that “the patient is unable to do much more than get around at the present…