Harris

Petitioner was an employee of the City of Monterey Park. According to his testimony he and others “were putting in a fire hydrant joint. Had it all coupled together, probably three or four hundred pounds of pipe, and I was down in the ditch, and I had a bar running in under the hydrant and pipe, . . . and in slipping it over the bank toward the edge of the bank, the bank caved in, and the bar moved, it [evidently the hydrant and pipe] slipped right down the bar, . . . [and] I had. to hold it.” He further testified that he then said “to the boys” that he “got an awful strain” and that he felt a “little stinging sensation” in the right groin. It later developed that he was afflicted with a hernia. He testified that he had never had a hernia before the incident we have described, nor any indications of one, and this evidence went undisputed.

At the hands of the respondent Industrial Accident Commission petitioner was allowed compensation in the form of a surgical operation to correct the hernia, but was denied compensation for the loss of time involved in his troubles upon the theory that the strain to which he had been subjected caused merely an accentuation of a previous hernial…