Smith v. State Accident Insurance Fund Corp.

Claimant appeals the award of permanent partial disability resulting from an industrial accident in March, 1977. The Board reduced to 50 percent the referee’s award of 70 percent permanent partial disability. Claimant seeks an award of permanent total disability.

Claimant is a 56 year old man with an eighth-grade education and a GED. He was a logger for ten years and felled timber until he suffered a back injury in 1958, requiring a spinal fusion. Thereafter he operated logging equipment in the woods. After 1968, claimant worked as a mechanic, a job for which he had no formal training. In…