Total Disability for Crane Operator with Monocular Vision

Abstract

An employee, being crane operator as his normal occupation, had a work accident and as a consequence he lost the vision of an eye. After the corresponding medical evaluation, the Spanish Institute of Social Security (INSS) granted him a situation of partial permanent disability. He requested that he should be granted a situation of total permanent disability and, after the denial of this situation at first instance and at the appeals tribunal, a cassation appeal is brought before the Spanish Supreme Court for unification of doctrine. The Supreme Court, focused on deciding if the monocular vision prevents the practice of the normal profession of crane operator and it established that this lesion involves a limitation for that job performance, which requires a binocular vision allowing to calculate distances and to eliminate the risks to cause an accident. Therefore, the Supreme Court rules declaring that the plaintiff should be granted the *situation of total permanent disability, as a result of a work accident.