Flores v. Workmen's Compensation Appeals Board

Opinion

GARGANO, J.

This litigation presents a fundamental question. To safeguard his workmen’s compensation benefits, must an employee who has sustained a surgically treatable industrial injury and whose employer has denied liability for the injury, submit to surgery offered by a county welfare department if he does not have the financial means to pay for the treatment?

The pertinent facts are undisputed.

Petitioner is a beekeeper’s helper who injured his left knee on April 30, 1969, when he fell from a pickup truck into a concrete-lined pit; he continued with his work even though the leg…