Burgess v. Belton Mills

• Decision Date: 14 September 1949
• Docket Number: 16262.
• Parties: BURGESS et al. v. BELTON MILLS et al.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

55 S.E.2d 292

215 S.C. 364

BURGESS et al. v. BELTON MILLS et al.

No. 16262.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

September 14, 1949

Watkins & Watkins, Anderson, for appellants.

James B. Pruitt, Anderson, for respondents.

TAYLOR Justice.

By this appeal we are asked to review the decision and findings of the Industrial Commission and the Circuit Court, awarding death benefits to the respondents for the death of Geneva Burgess.

Mrs Burgess, on her first day of work, August 30, 1945, at the Belton Mills, Belton, S. C., was alleged to have 'sprained' her back while picking up a quill box that had overturned. Claim was duly filed with the Industrial Commission, and, pursuant thereto, an award was made for disability compensation, and payments were being made thereon at the time of her death, July 31, 1946. Thereafter, claim was duly made for death benefits, and notice of such hearing bore the same docket number as the claim for disability compensation. Appellant promptly filed objection on the grounds that the two were separate claims involving separate parties. Pursuant to this hearing, the Commission made its award in favor of respondents and held that the two claims would be considered as one. Appellants then appealed to the Circuit Court which reversed the Commission on its ruling that the case was one and the same, and held that this is another claim separate and apart from that for disability compensation, in that it is for death benefits and the parties are different, but affirmed the award of the Commission.

There is no appeal from the ruling of the Circuit Court that the two claims were separate and distinct, the one from the other, and should be so treated, but appellants come to this Court contending that there was no testimony of a causal connection between the injury suffered by Mrs. Burgess and her death.

Since there is no question as to who are the proper parties, we will proceed to examine the record to ascertain whether or not there is any competent evidence to the effect that the deceased's death was attributable to or accelerated by the accident heretofore referred to.

A review of the testimony shows that Mrs. Burgess, on the date in question, arighted her quill box which had turned over experiencing pain as she did so, stating, 'The pain struck me up and down by backbone and come straight around me.' She continued to work the rest of the shift and that of the the following night, suffering pain.

Dr. T. Willis Martin testified as follows:

'Q. I will ask you, Doctor, if in 1943 you discovered that Mrs. Burgess had a cancer of the breast? A. In about 1943 I delivered a baby for her and found a lump in her breast, and she couldn't successfully nurse the baby. There were glands enlarged in the left armpit--I believe it was the left armpit--so we had to dispense with that breast during that nursing siege, and I advised her to go to Dr. Wrenn and to the clinic and be checked up, but she did not go: she objected to going and kept putting it off and did not report. I think that was in 1943. So we just let the matter drop and I saw her from time to time and checked up on it two or three times. It didn't seem to be enlarging or growing rapidly and the glands hadn't made very much change, so all I could do was just to suggest each time, and I think I made three different suggestions over a period of a year or year and a half.

'Q. Doctor, did Mrs. Burgess come to you sometime in 1945 and tell you that she had fallen in the mill or something? A. Yes, sir. I think it was the last of August in 1945 that she reported up to the office one morning and said 'Last night I fell and hurt my back in the mill.' I examined her as thoroughly as I could--I had not acquired my X-ray then--and I couldn't make out any injury; there was no apparent bruise or anything. So I suggested, in view of what we had found out about her previously, that she go and let Dr. Wrenn X-ray her back and also pass on that breast while she was over there. She put that off, put me off several weeks before I finally coaxed her over there, I think it was, but she finally reported to Dr. Wrenn, and he immediately sent me a written report that he found destruction of one of the vertebrae, partial destruction of one of the vertebrae of the back.

'Q. Doctor, when she came to you and complained about having fallen there in the mill, did you find any physical evidence of a strain or a muscle spasm? A. No, sir. I went over her carefully. There was a tender area in her back. There was no bruise, discoloration or swelling. I couldn't make out any definite physical appearances of a strain or a trauma.

'Q. You say that you did find a tender place in her back? A. Yes, sir.

'Q. Doctor, if her cancer had advanced to the point that part of the backbone was eaten away, in your opinion would or not that have caused the tenderness that you found; could it or not have caused it? A. Yes sir, it most likely would have.'

Dr. J. R. Young testified:

'Q. Doctor, will you take it up there and tell the history that you got from Mrs. Burgess and your findings? A. She gave a history at that time that since the spring of 1943 she had had a lump in her left breast.

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'A. She said that in recent months the tumor in her left breast had gotten a good deal more noticeable. She had had a baby six months before in March, and she developed a big lump in her arm. Her family physician had referred her to Dr. Wrenn. She stated also at that time when she came to the clinic on that day that in August, the preceding August, while at work, she had strained her back.

'We examined her and found that she did have what we call an inoperable cancer of the left breast. What we mean by that is that it had spread from that side to the glands in her arm; and we X-rayed her back and found it had spread to the spine, so it was not an operable case. Dr. Wrenn treated her with X-ray, and she responded dramatically almost to the X-ray treatment. Her breast shrank up in size and the lump in her arm almost disappeared and she got definitely better from the standpoint of symptoms. A few weeks later, the last of October, she came back, and she was about five months pregnant. On the opinion of her family physician, Dr. Martin and I, we all felt that should be interrupted. So I operated on her abdomen, and the operation consisting of removing the womb with the baby in it and the ovaries. The reason that was done was to slow down the cancer process. She stood that operation all right in October, and following that she looked to us like she made definite improvement. She gained some in weight, looked better and felt better from October until about the following June; she picked up in weight and looked definitely better.

'In July of 1946 Dr. Martin referred her back to the hospital. She, in the meantime, had become paralyzed; she had had what is commonly called a stroke and was paralyzed on her right side. She was admitted there, of course, in the ward, in the bed, and examination revealed that she had large masses in the upper part of her abdomen around the region of her liver, connected to the liver, and the paralysis on her right side involved both lower and upper extremities, and our opinion was, though we didn't prove that by autopsy, that she probably had a malignant spread to the brain. She died there; having been admitted on the 25th of July, she died on the 31st, about five o'clock in the morning. We did not do a postmortem on her, but our opinion was that she died of cancer that began in the breast and spread all over her body, particularly to the liver, and from a symptomatic standpoint we believe it spread to the brain, though we didn't prove that. Near the liver, when I operated on her the previous October, we found at that time she had a spread of cancer to her liver. We had the liver in our hand and felt the spread of cancer to the liver. We knew when we operated on her it was not operative, couldn't cure her, but would help her; and apparently it did give her a few months of apparent freedom of symptoms, apparently comfortable living.

'Q. Doctor, was this patient in a cancerous condition from 1943--you say that is when she gave you the history? A. Yes; according to the history, she said she had a lump in left breast in the spring of 1943, though I didn't see it until October, 1945.

'Q. Doctor, when she first came to you she was complaining of cancer. Is that correct? A. The first time I saw here was on that date. We found her to have cancer. What she was complaining of at that time was pain in the back. We X-rayed her and found she had cancer in the back, had cancer in the breast, had cancer in the arm, and had a cancer of the backbone.

'Q. Doctor, if Mrs. Burgess had strained her back in her work, would that produce cancer? A. No.

'Q. Was it when she first came to you that she was complaining of pain in the back, or was it some time after that when she first mentioned the pain in the back? A. The first time I saw her--I think I am correct in saying that Dr. Wrenn had seen her before I saw her in the Cancer Clinic; that's my recollection of it--the first time I saw her on the 4th of October in the Cancer Clinic as a patient her complaints were referable to her back, though she had just what I told you, cancer of the breast and cancer in the arm and cancer of the backbone.

'Q. Now, then, Doctor, if she had had cancer and it had developed to the point which you found it, would you expect that she would have pain in the back from the cancer? A. Yes. When a cancer spreads to the spine it gives a great deal of pain; and in her case it was very largely relieved by X-ray treatment, it was...