Caruthers v. Lake County Mfg. Co.

A construction of the Compensation Act of 1919, chapter 123, as amended by chapter 84 of the Acts of 1923, is involved. The deceased employee left only a dependent widow. His wages had been $15 per week. Thirty per cent, thereof (paragraph 5 of section 30) being less than the minimum (paragraph 16, Id.), the trial judge decreed to the widow $5 a week for four hundred weeks. She appeals and insists that by virtue of paragraph 3 of section 1 of the amendatory act of 1923, she is entitled of fifty per centum of the deceased’s wages.

The purpose of the pertinent part of the amendatory act is thus…