Crispin v. Leedom & Worrall Co.
| Decision Date | 04 October 1940 |
| Docket Number | 168-1940 |
| Citation | 15 A.2d 549,142 Pa.Super. 1 |
| Parties | Crispin v. Leedom and Worrall Company et al., Appellants |
| Court | Pennsylvania Superior Court |
Argued April 17, 1940.
Appeal from judgment of C. P. Butler Co., Sept. T., 1939, No. 24, in case of Everett S. Crispin v. Leedom and Worrall Company et al.
Appeal by defendants from award of Workmen's Compensation Board.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the Superior Court.
Appeal dismissed and judgment entered for claimant, opinion by Wilson, P. J. Defendants appealed.
Error assigned was the judgment.
Judgment affirmed.
H. S Millar, with him W. D. Brandon, J. Campbell Brandon and L. F McGrath, for appellants.
Dale B. Painter, with him Clark H. Painter and Howard I. Painter, of Painter & Painter, for appellee.
Before Keller, P. J., Cunningham, Baldrige, Stadtfeld, Parker, Rhodes and Hirt, JJ.
The employer and its insurance carrier have appealed in this workmen's compensation case from the judgment entered in the court below upon an award of compensation to the claimant for total disability, held to be attributable to a "personal injury .... by an accident, in the course of his employment." The fundamental issue is whether there was competent proof of an "injury by an accident," within the meaning of Section 301 of our Workmen's Compensation Act of June 2, 1915, P. L. 736, 77 PS §§ 411 and 431. The portion of the "physical structure" of claimant's body involved is his heart, and the "violence" found by the board to have been inflicted upon it was a strain suffered while claimant was assisting in pushing a loaded truck off an elevator.
As there was a finding by the referee and board, based upon the medical testimony introduced on behalf of claimant, that at the time of the alleged injury he had a preexisting "arteriosclerotic type of heart affection," and as there was no evidence of any unexpected, undesigned or unforeseen, external violence to any part of claimant's body, we are confronted in the disposition of this appeal with one of those border line and troublesome cases which frequently arise in this branch of the law.
Having in mind the admonition of our Supreme Court that an accident cannot be inferred merely from an injury and that there must be some evidence, either direct or circumstantial, of an accident, together with proof of a resulting injury, in order to sustain an award of compensation (Adamchick v. Wyoming Val. Coal Co., 332 Pa. 401, 3 A.2d 377), we have concluded to recite the evidence at some length and attempt a review and classification of the decided cases in the hope that some general principles of law may be defined for the guidance of those charged with the administration of the statute.
The employer company was engaged in the wholesale grocery and produce business. Claimant was employed as a stock man; his duties consisted of unloading cars and storing groceries and canned goods in its warehouse. These goods were loaded on trucks, which were then pushed onto an elevator and taken to the various floors. The trucks are four feet wide, six feet long, and about eighteen or twenty inches high; they rest on four wheels, and weigh about 250 pounds.
Shortly after reporting for work on November 18, 1937, the claimant, together with a fellow employee, Myles Hoover, loaded forty cases of canned goods on a truck. The cases weighed about 37 1/2 pounds each, and together with the weight of the truck the total load was about 1750 pounds. The truck was then pushed onto the elevator and taken to the fourth floor. The elevator was operated by pushing a button and stopped automatically at the desired floor. In this instance, however, the elevator did not stop on a level with the fourth floor of the warehouse, but remained about an inch or an inch and a half below the warehouse floor. Claimant and Hoover then attempted unsuccessfully to push the truck off the elevator and over the obstruction thus created. A second effort was necessary. Claimant's description of the incident reads:
The claimant and Hoover continued to push the truck for a distance of about forty feet, but by that time the claimant was too ill to do any more work. He went home and was treated by his family doctor; he attempted to return to work on three occasions, but his condition was such that he could not perform even light work.
On cross-examination, claimant admitted that on several occasions he had handled loads as large as the load in question, and that there was nothing unusual about this particular one. He further admitted that the elevator would not come up level with the floor when heavily loaded, and that it could not be manipulated by hand so as to make it level with the floor -- an adjustment with a screwdriver would be necessary. The same trouble had been experienced on other occasions, and it was "more or less an ordinary thing" when the load was heavy.
Hoover's account of the circumstances under which claimant became ill reads:
His testimony was also to the effect that the elevator usually stopped below the level of the floor when heavily loaded.
Upon the question of a causal connection between the alleged injury and claimant's conceded disability, or, in other words, upon the issue whether his disability was due to the normal progress of the heart condition which existed at the date of the occurrence or was caused by a sudden, unexpected, and fortuitous strain upon that organ, claimant introduced the testimony of two physicians.
Dr. J. D. Purvis, who treated the claimant following the injury, said that his diagnosis was an arteriosclerotic type of heart which had been overloaded, i. e., the heart muscle was strained. He further testified that in his opinion the claimant's act in pushing the heavily loaded truck from the elevator was a precipitating factor in bringing about his disability. On cross-examination, he elaborated on his testimony by saying that what happened to the claimant at the time of his injury was a loss of compensation, whereby the heart was unable to come back to its previous condition; the effort caused a strain on the heart muscle.
Dr. C. A. Robb testified that in his opinion the claimant had a weak heart to begin with and that the effort exerted by him was a factor in producing his disability; there was a cardiac strain, with resulting de-compensation and enlargement of the heart. On cross-examination, he explained this further by saying that the heart structure of the claimant had been damaged by the exertion.
It further appears from the record that prior to the day of the alleged accident the claimant never experienced any difficulty with his heart, nor had he ever complained of any such illness.
The appellants submitted medical opinion evidence conflicting with that given in behalf of claimant. Dr. W. L. Mullins testified that in his opinion the cause of the claimant's disability was "probably high blood pressure and degenerative changes in the heart and blood vessels." The witness ascribed claimant's symptoms to a thrombosis of a branch of one of the coronary arteries, but admitted that one with a heart condition such as claimant had would be more susceptible to a heart strain than a person with a normal heart, and that the effort exerted by claimant might possibly have had something to do with his disability.
The sufficiency of the medical testimony in behalf of claimant is challenged, but there is no merit in the contention. His witnesses testified unequivocally that in their opinion the injury occurred when he pushed the truck from the elevator and that the effort there involved was a precipitating factor in bringing about his disability. Such testimony was sufficient: Vorbnoff v. Mesta Machine Co., 286 Pa. 199, 133 A. 256; McLaughlin v. P. H. Butler Co., 122 Pa.Super. 139, 186 A. 190; Elonis v. Lytle Coal Co., 134 Pa.Super. 264, 3 A.2d 995. In any event the question was for the board and its findings, based as they are on competent evidence, cannot be set aside. Joebon v. Reitz Coal Co., 136 Pa.Super. 25, 7 A.2d 11.
Summarizing the evidence, there was proof that the claimant, having a somewhat weakened heart and without the application of any external violence, suffered an internal injury, in the nature of a heart strain, which caused a sudden and disabling change in the physical structure of his body, while pushing a heavy truck from an elevator which was about an inch and a half below floor level. There was nothing unusual in the work or in the fact that the elevator was below the level of the floor. There was also evidence that claimant's preexisting heart condition was not of a serious or rapidly progressive type but was a chronic condition, due to ordinary "wear and tear," and had not affected in any way his ability to perform hard labor of the kind he was engaged in when injured. He had worked, practically continuously, for Leedom and Worrall since 1909.
When we turn from the consideration of the evidence in the case at bar to a...
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...v. Driscoll, 68 Idaho 552, 200 P.2d 1014; Brown's Case, v. Nelson Co., 123 Me. 424, 123 A. 421, 60 A.L.R. 1293; Crispin v. Leedom & Worrall Co., 142 Pa.Super. 1, 15 A.2d 549; Devlin v. Department of Labor and Industries, 194 Wash. 549, 78 P.2d 952; Earhart v. Wible Ice & Cold Storage Co., 1......
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