Carruthers v. PPG Industries, Inc.

• Decision Date: 01 May 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-C-2947,88-C-2947
• Citation: 543 So.2d 472
• Parties: E. Jean CARRUTHERS v. PPG INDUSTRIES, INC.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

Page 472

543 So.2d 472

E. Jean CARRUTHERS v. PPG INDUSTRIES, INC.

No. 88-C-2947.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

May 1, 1989.

Rehearing Granted June 30, 1989.

Stephen A. Berniard, Jr., Lee Gallaspy, Raggio, Cappel et al, for plaintiff-applicant.

John S. Bradford, Jeanne M. Sievert, Stockwell, Sievert et al, for defendant-respondent.

COLE, Justice.

A few minutes after he arrived at work, plaintiff's husband died of a heart attack. Since the death occurred at the place of employment, plaintiff sought workers' compensation benefits for her husband's death. The decedent, Stephen Carruthers, suffered from emphysema, hypertension and diabetes, had residual damage from childhood poliomyelitis, and took medication to control the hypertension and to prevent a recurrence of congestive heart failure. Defendant PPG Industries, Inc., his employer, refused to pay benefits, believing the death was not work-related. Plaintiff filed suit and the lower courts found plaintiff failed to prove she was entitled to benefits.

ISSUE RESOLUTION

The issue before us is whether plaintiff proved by a preponderance of the evidence that ascending a flight of stairs at his workplace shortly before death had a causal relationship to Carruthers' fatal heart attack. The plaintiff contends the work-related exertion, stress or strain need only be of a degree greater than that of decedent's everyday non-employment life. In Guidry v. Sline Industrial Painters, Inc., 418 So.2d 626 (La.1982), we determined the correct standard in pre-existing heart disease cases is that the employment-related exertion, stress or strain, acting upon the pre-existing disease, must be greater than that generated in everyday non-employment life. The test is an objective one; the standard reference is the everyday life of the average non-worker.

We conclude the evidence in this case does not meet the applicable standard of proof and we therefore affirm the lower courts.

FACTS

Stephen Carruthers drove to work on the morning of February 2, 1983, parked his car in the plant lot, proceeded to the office building, entered and ascended five steps to a landing on the first floor level. He had climbed these five steps without complaint since the middle of 1980. From the landing he had to ascend approximately eight additional steps in order to reach his office on the second floor. An employee in the office adjacent to Mr. Carruthers saw him pass in the hall. A few minutes later, another employee found him slumped unconscious over his desk. Although medical help was summoned, he could not be revived and the death certificate listed the cause of death as acute myocardial infarction.

Mr. Carruthers worked as a chemical engineer for PPG Industries for 29 years and eight months, from the time of college graduation until his death at age 54. At the time of his death, he had long suffered from a number of ongoing medical problems. He had contracted poliomyelitis at the age of 17, from which he had residual damage to the chest muscles and lungs. He developed high blood pressure and diabetes in the early 1970s, then, some years later, emphysema. The record shows decedent had a history of smoking although it is unclear how much or how long he smoked. At the time of his death, he used an oxygen machine in his off-work hours.

In 1980, Mr. Carruthers had been transferred by PPG from Beaumont to Lake Charles, where he worked as a senior process engineer. In November of 1982, he was assigned to a new project and his office was moved from the first floor to the second floor, near the offices of employees engaged in the same project. He died the following February and his widow, Jean Carruthers, now argues his death was accelerated because he had to climb stairs to the second floor in the course of his employment.

After his sudden death, PPG conducted an investigation. It concluded the death was not a work-related occurrence and plaintiff was not entitled to workers' compensation benefits. The trial court agreed and the court of appeal affirmed, 534 So.2d 42, finding the plaintiff had failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Carruthers' heart attack was causally related to his employment.

ANALYSIS

This workers' compensation claim is governed by La.R.S. 23:1031, which provides in relevant part:

If an employee not otherwise eliminated from the benefits of this Chapter, receives personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment, his employer shall pay compensation....

Under our jurisprudence, myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) have been found to satisfy the statutory requirements of personal injury by accident. See, e.g., Guidry v. Sline Industrial Painters, Inc., 418 So.2d 626, 629 (La.1982); Roussel v. Colonial Sugars Co., 318 So.2d 37 (La.1975); Hemphill v. Tremont Lumber Co., 209 La. 885, 25 So.2d 625 (1946). It is also well-settled that an accident occurs in the course of employment when it happens during the time of employment and at a place contemplated by the employment. Reid v. Gamb, 509 So.2d 995, 996 (La.1987); Michaleski v. Western Preferred Casualty Co., 472 So.2d 18 (La.1985); Guidry, supra; Lisonbee v. Chicago Mill & Lumber Co., 278 So.2d 5 (La.1973). This is true even if the heart attack occurs during an authorized rest period. Guidry, 418 So.2d at 629. Therefore, even though Carruthers had just arrived at work and might not have begun his daily tasks, his heart attack took place during the time of employment and in the usual place of employment. Thus, we find the injury here occurred "in the course of employment."

The more difficult question in this case is whether Carruthers' death arose out of his employment. The function of the "arising out of" requirement of La.R.S. 23:1031 is to assure compensation will be awarded only for personal injury causally related to the employment and fairly part of the employer's cost of doing business. Reid, 509 So.2d 995, 996 (La.1987), citing Nix v. City of Houma, 488 So.2d 184 (La.1986); Guidry, supra; Adams v. New Orleans Public Service, Inc., 418 So.2d 485 (La.1981) (modified on rehearing); Roussel, supra; Leleux v. Lumbermen's Mutual Ins. Co., 318 So.2d 15 (La.1975); Prim v. City of Shreveport, 297 So.2d 421 (La.1974). See also, 1B Larson, Workmen's Compensation Law Sec. 38.81 (1986) (hereinafter Larson) and Malone and Johnson, 13 Louisiana Civil Law Treatise--Workers' Compensation Law and Practice Sec. 191 (2d ed. 1980) (hereinafter Malone and Johnson).

The determination of what compensation payments are fairly considered a part of the employer's cost of business is best made by looking at the policies underlying workers' compensation:

The purpose of the [workers' compensation] Act is to single out employment risks from the general body of dangers to which all mankind is exposed. The perils of employment have been regarded by our legislature as deserving special treatment because they present special economic and social problems not typical of accidents generally. It has been said that the purpose of compensation is to spread the cost of industrial accidents among the consumers of the industry's product.

Malone and Johnson, supra, Sec. 192 at 387.

In many situations, compensation follows automatically from accidental injury in the workplace. For example, benefits are awarded when the employee does not contribute in any way to the injury which occurs, but is merely in the workplace at the time. In these instances, any employment nexus, even the fact the employer merely put the employee in the place where the injury occurred, suffices for recovery. On the other hand, when the employee contributes some personal element of risk, e.g. heart disease, the employment must increase the risk of injury before the employee can be compensated. Employment factors must offset the causal contribution of the personal element of risk. 1B Larson, supra, Sec. 38.83(b).

Some scholars have argued that every accident occurring in the course of employment should be compensable regardless of the nature of the risk involved, and some jurisdictions have adopted such a view. Most states, however, have insisted the risk that brought about the accident must bear some relationship to the nature of the employment. Malone and Johnson, supra, Sec. 192. Our legislature adopted the latter view by incorporating into La.R.S. 23:1031 the requirement that an accident arise out of the employment to be compensable. Our law insists that the risk which brought about the accident be related in some way to the nature of employment and caused by some unique characteristic associated with the work or the working environment. Malone and Johnson, supra, at Sec. 143.

The legislative choice is appropriate. A rule requiring employers to compensate every injury, regardless of whether the employment in any way caused the injury, would unfairly burden employers and thus threaten the availability of adequate compensation for those employees whose injuries were in fact caused by their employment. Moreover, were the rule otherwise, many employers would be reluctant to hire workers with even slight health problems if the natural progression of employees' illnesses, rather than work-related causes, made employers liable for compensation. As Professor Larson has explained:

If the time has come for the employee to die a natural death, or to expire from the effects of some disease or internal weakness of which he would as promptly have expired whether he had been working or not, the fact that his demise takes place in an employment setting rather than at home does not, of course, make the death compensable.

1 Larson, supra, at Sec. 7.20. At the same time, employees who deserve compensation should not be denied. Thus the long-standing rule is that an employer must take the worker as he finds him. Behan v. John B. Honor Co., 143 La. 348, 78 So. 589 (1917).

Death from heart disease is ordinarily the result of natural physiological...