Defendants were granted leave to appeal from an October 22, 1969, order of the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board which had affirmed an order of a referee awarding compensation benefits to plaintiff from September 11, 1966, “until further order of the department”.

Plaintiff, at age 17, was hired by the Mohawk Lumber Company on November 13, 1965. On November 15, he was injured when he fell from a lift truck on which he was riding and it ran over his foot. Defendants paid compensation benefits from November 16, 1965 to January 9, 1966. Plaintiff returned to work on January 10, 1966, and worked part-time until the summer when he switched to full-time work. In September, 1966, he quit work.

On November 7, 1966, plaintiff applied for a hearing, claiming he was again disabled due to his 1965 *437injury. The hearing was held in June, 1967, and on July 3, 1967, the referee held that plaintiff was disabled as alleged and awarded compensation from September 11, 1966, until further order.

Defendants appealed the matter to the appeal board and on February 15, 1968, the parties argued the case. Twenty months later and more than two years after the original hearing, the appeal board affirmed the referee’s order for payment of compensation “until further order of the department.” By leave granted, defendants now appeal the board’s decision.

Defendants do not contest the findings of disability and the award of compensation through the time of the referee’s decision in 1967. Defendants, however, complain that the order requiring payment of compensation during the more than two years that the case was in appellate deliberation and to date is unsupported by any evidence of continued disability during that time. We agree.

Since the board was faced with a claim for temporary total disability, it is clear that they could, in a proper case, award compensation until further order. White v. Michigan Consolidated Gas Company (1958), 352 Mich 201.1 Such order does not finally determine rights to compensation; a petition to modify or stop is permissible where a claimant’s physical condition has changed. Goines v. Kelsey Hayes Wheel Co. (1940), 294 Mich 156. A prerequisite to making this type of order would be the existence of competent evidence upon which the appeal board can make a finding of continuing disability as a matter of reasonable prediction. See the second White case, supra, 211.

*438The only findings made by the referee and the appeal board were: (1) the plaintiff suffered an injury arising out of and in the course of his employment; (2) the injury encompassed both his ankle and his great toe; and (3) that plaintiff again became disabled on September 11, 1966, and was still disabled when the proofs were closed. Since the board made no finding concerning continued disability, this Court may examine the testimony taken at the hearing to determine whether there is any competent evidence to support the award. Goines v. Kelsey Hayes Wheel Co., supra.

Virtually all of the testimony on plaintiff’s prognosis came from Dr. Kaplan, who was treating him at the time. He stated that he had surgically removed the nail on plaintiff’s toe, that plaintiff would not be able to wear a regular shoe2 on his foot for a couple weeks, and that it would heal completely in six weeks. The doctor said that he didn’t expect any trouble with the toe after that. On the subject of defendant’s ankle, Dr. Kaplan felt that defendant had suffered a severe sprain with ligamentous tear resulting in traumatic arthritis. He further testified that while this condition is disabling and takes a long time to mend, he could not say whether plaintiff was presently disabled, since he hadn’t treated the ankle since July of 1966.

When the referee handed down his decision four weeks after the close of proofs, it is a reasonable inference from the proofs that plaintiff’s toe was not infected and that he could wear a regular shoe on his right foot.

The scope of review in workmen’s compensation cases is extremely limited; the sole question on review is whether there is any evidence to support *439the award. Mitchell v. Metal Assemblies, Inc. (1967), 379 Mich 368; Maki v. Hanna Ore Division (1970), 24 Mich App 258; Scroggins v. Corning Glass Company (1969), 382 Mich 628; MCLA § 413-.12 (Stat Ann 1968 Bev § 17.186). Applying this test to the facts, we find that there was absolutely no competent evidence that plaintiff would continue to be disabled after June 7, 1967. The plaintiff himself testified only that he was not able to work at the time of the hearing. Dr. Kaplan, who was then his doctor, testified that he didn’t expect plaintiff to have any more trouble with his toe and that he could not give an opinion as to plaintiff’s ankle. Nor do we feel that this is the type of case where the board would be justified in concluding that the injury was a continuing one on the basis of the nature of the injury.3

Thus, this ease is analogous to the first White case wherein the Court reversed an award of benefits “until further order” due to a complete lack of evidence on the continuance of the claimant’s disability. A mere finding that the claimant was disabled at the date of the hearing is insufficient.

Furthermore, we do not feel, as plaintiff suggests, that the second White ease has changed the holding in the first. In Hollingsworth v. Auto Specialties Manufacturing Company (1958), 352 Mich 255, 267, 268, the Court said:

“While we think there are situations where our holding in the first White case may properly apply, *440and we do not seek to overrule that case, this is not to subscribe to the evidently growing notion in some quarters that our decision in that case means that the appeal board in workmen’s compensation cases must, henceforth, in every instance have spanking-fresh testimony before it before it dare make any findings or reach a contrary award. We find nothing in the White case or the act to sustain any such necessity and we do not want lightly to get abroad the notion that the appeal board must in every case resort to the cumbersome and delaying (and expensive) expedient of taking or permitting the taking of additional testimony in order either to affirm or upset any findings or awards made by the referee.”

In view of the nature of the illness, the lack of testimony concerning the claimant’s prognosis, and the more than two-year delay between the hearing and the decision of the appeal board, we feel that this is a situation where the first White case may properly be applied.

Insofar as the order of the appeal board requires payment of compensation benefits for periods after June 7,1967, the order is reversed without prejudice to the right of plaintiff to later make a claim for and submit proofs of disability after that date.

Reversed in part; affirmed in part.

(dissenting). By a constitutional provision and the governing statute and judicial decisions, we are limited in our review of the decision of the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board to an inquiry whether there is “any evidence whatever” to support a finding of continuing disability.1

*441While the record would not support a finding of disability attributable to the toe beyond the date of the referee’s decision on July 3, 1967,2 there was sufficient evidence to support a finding of continuing disability because of the injury to the ankle.

The testimony of the physician who treated the ankle that plaintiff Ervin A. Lyczynski was disabled by reason of the tear of the medial supporting ligaments of the right foot and ankle from activity involving a twist or turn, and that the medial aspect of the right ankle would give way as described by Lyczynski,3 is sufficient to permit “a finding of con*442tinuing- disability as a matter of reasonable prediction.” White v. Michigan Consolidated Gas Co. (1958), 352 Mich 201, 211.

The ankle may well have healed between the June, 1967 hearing and the appeal board’s decision on October 22, 1969, affirming the referee’s decision of July 3, 1967. The delay of 27 months between the referee’s decision and the appeal board’s decision is regrettable. The further delay of 19 months between the appeal board’s decision and the decision of our Court is also unfortunate. And there may still be further delay if Lyczynski seeks and obtains leave to appeal from the Supreme Court.

It is, indeed, the law that an employer is not obliged to pay compensation after disability has ceased. If the employer claims that after the hearing the injured employee ceased to be disabled, the employer may apply to the appeal board for the taking of additional testimony. 4 In this case, the employer did not avail itself of that remedy. We may not properly substitute doubts as to whether *443the disablement continued for 27 additional months for concrete evidence that it did not.

The first White case5 does not require reversal of the appeal board. There the Court found that the record presented6 did not support a finding of continuing disability. In the first White case the employer was successful before the department, and it was the employee who appealed. There was a delay of 18 months between the decision appealed and the decision of the appeal tribunal favorable to the employee. The delay was largely attributable to the employee’s attorney; his brief was not filed until 16 months after the departmental decision. The delay was counted as an adverse factor against the employee, the Court saying (p 162) that “there was no evidence submitted to the [appeal tribunal] in regard to the appellee’s physical condition since the date of the hearing 18 months previous to the commission’s opinion and order”.7

White, undaunted, filed a further application with the department and again prevailed before the appeal board. The employer’s appeal to the Supreme Court in the second White case is reported ten volumes later in the reports, White v. Michigan Consolidated Gas Co. (1958), 352 Mich 201, 203, 204, *444209, 210, 211. Only three of the justices who sat in the first White case, Justices Kelly, Dethmebs and Carr, were still on the Court when the second White case was decided. They dissented in part from the decision favorable to White.

Commenting on the first White case, the Court in the second White case said that in the first case, “this Court disapproved an award of continuing compensation beyond November 7, 1952 [the date of the departmental hearing] apparently on the basis of extended delay in the appeal process and on the finding that the record then submitted did not contain competent evidence to sustain a finding of continuing disability beyond November 7, 1952”. The second White Court added:

“Whatever may have been the state of the record at the time this Court previously heard this matter, we are satisfied that the current record contains competent evidence from which the appeal board could have found plaintiff disabled as a result of his injury for the specific periods of the award.”

The Court also observed:

“We deal in this case with an instance of temporary total disability. In such a situation, the device employed by the appeal board in ordering payment of compensation until further order of the board, we have many times approved. [Citations omitted.]

“Such an order does not finally determine rights to compensation. A petition to stop, to decrease or to increase compensation is always permissible in order to show circumstances concerning a claimant’s physical condition which have changed from the last date of hearing.

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“We believe that what has been said serves to answer appellant’s contention that the previous *445order of this Court in White v. Michigan Consolidated Gas Company (1955), 342 Mich 160, was res judicata * * *

“While this Court set aside the appeal board order as to continuing compensation beyond November 7, 1952, such an action did not finally determine the rights of the parties either. This Court held that the record then presented to it did not contain competent evidence upon which the appeal board could have made a finding of continuing disability as a matter of reasonable prediction. This Court’s order did not mean that in the event such disability did in fact occur that a subsequent showing and claim for compensation would be barred.”8

The question of the sufficiency of the evidence to support a finding of continuing disability has been before the Supreme Court several times since the White cases were decided. It is significant that, although the Court has not in its subsequent decisions disavowed the opinion filed in the first White case and has, indeed, reaffirmed it, in no case since the first White case has the Supreme Court reversed a finding of the appeal board on the ground that there, was insufficient evidence to support a finding of continuing disability.9

*447To require an injured workman to prove at the time of hearing that his then condition will inevitably continue throughout the time consumed by appeals to the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board, to our Court, and to the Supreme Court which, as this case illustrates, may consume in excess of six years in the aggregate, would in many cases be to impose on him a totally unreasonable burden of proof. It is enough, as the second White Court said, if there is evidence which supports “a finding of continuing disability as a matter of reasonable prediction”. White v. Michigan Consolidated Gas Company (1958), 352 Mich 201, 211.

The remedy of an employer who contends that the injured workman’s physical condition has changed since the hearing is a petition to stop or decrease compensation, as suggested by the Supreme Court in the second White case and in Johnson v. Northwestern Veneer & Plywood Corporation (1959), 355 Mich 695, or a motion before the appeal board before its decision is announced to submit additional testimony, as suggested by the Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v. Auto Specialties Manufacturing Company (1958), 352 Mich 255.