[Plaintiff, Appellee]
[Defendant, Appellant] Head of Busan Dongnae District Labor Office
[Judgment Below] Busan High Court Decision 88Gu612, decided October 14, 1988
[Order]
The appeal is dismissed.
The costs of the appeal are to be borne by the Defendant.
[Reasoning]
We examine the grounds of appeal submitted by the Defendant's litigation representative.
1. In its reasoning, the court below found the following facts: the Plaintiff had worked as a driver for Haedong Passenger Bus Co., Ltd. (해동여객자동차주식회사) since around June 1979; on May 24, 1987, while driving the company's bus past a road next to Suyeong Airfield in Haeundae-gu, Busan, a 15-ton dump truck suddenly overtook the bus at excessive speed, passing very close alongside it while blasting a high-powered horn, causing the Plaintiff to suffer a hearing impairment; as a result, the Plaintiff's left ear became totally deaf due to sensorineural hearing loss, and the right ear became fixed in a state of moderately severe sudden hearing loss; that such sensorineural hearing loss is a hearing impairment arising from disorders of the inner ear and the auditory nerve itself while the sound-conducting apparatus remains intact, and that sudden hearing loss is a condition in which a person who was previously healthy and asymptomatic develops sensorineural hearing loss within several hours or days, sometimes accompanied by tinnitus and dizziness, both conditions being characterized by the fact that no clear cause can typically be found, although noise or acoustic trauma can be one of the causes of such hearing loss symptoms; and that the Plaintiff underwent annual health examinations since joining the company, and although the health examination conducted on September 21, 1981 revealed symptoms of hearing loss in the left ear, all health examinations conducted in the years before and after that were judged to show normal hearing. Upon examining the process by which the court below selected and weighed the evidence in arriving at the above findings, in light of the record, we find it to be proper, and there is no violation of the rules of evidence as alleged in the grounds of appeal.
2.
An "occupational accident" under Article 3, Paragraph 1 of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act (산업재해보상보험법) refers to an accident that occurs to a worker in the course of performing his duties and that arises from those duties; therefore, there must be a causal relationship between the duties and the accident, and in such a case, the burden of proving the causal relationship between the worker's duties and the accident lies with the party asserting it.
The court below erred in stating, in effect, that if a worker's accident occurred in the course of performing his duties, it should be deemed an occupational accident unless it can be found that there is no causal relationship with the duties, thereby implying that the burden of proof lies with the Defendant. However, in light of the record and the facts as determined by the court below, the Plaintiff had performed driving duties for several years without any abnormality, and it was only after suddenly being subjected to the sudden traumatic noise impact described above on May 24, 1987 that the Plaintiff began to exhibit severe symptoms of hearing loss. In view of this, it cannot be said that it is improper to infer that the Plaintiff's illness in this case was caused by the sudden noise described above. Therefore, the above error of the court below did not affect the outcome of the judgment, and this ground of appeal is without merit.
Furthermore, the court below's determination that Article 54, Item 12 of the Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act (근로기준법시행령) merely provides illustrative examples of occupational diseases, and its recognition that the Plaintiff's illness in this case constitutes an occupational accident under the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, is proper, and there is no error of misapprehension of law as alleged in the grounds of appeal. This ground of appeal is without merit.
3. Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed, and the costs of the appeal are to be borne by the losing party. This judgment is rendered as stated in the Order by the unanimous opinion of the participating Justices.
Justice Yoon Kwan (Presiding Justice), Kim Deok-ju, Bae Man-un, Ahn U-man