Csont v. Brands.

• Decision Date: 19 August 1946
• Docket Number: No. 220.,220.
• Citation: 48 A.2d 573,134 N.J.L. 395
• Parties: CSONT v. STANDARD BRANDS.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

134 N.J.L. 395

48 A.2d 573

CSONT

v.STANDARD BRANDS.

No. 220.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Aug. 19, 1946.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Arthur Csont, claimant, opposed by Standard Brands, employer. Judgment reversing the Workmen's Compensation Bureau's judgment dismissing the petition, and the employer brings certiorari.

Reversed and Bureau's judgment affirmed.

May term 1946, before BODINE, PERSKIE, and WACHENFELD, JJ.

Albert E. Schober, of Newark (John J. Francis, of Newark, of counsel), for prosecutor.

Anna B. Hogan, of Jersey City (William W. Shaw, of Jersey City, of counsel), for respondent.

PERSKIE, Justice.

This is a workman's compensation case. The meritorious question for consideration is whether the employee suffered a compensable hernia. R.S. 34:15-12, subd. x, N.J.S.A.

Arthur Csont, petitioner below and respondent here, hereafter referred to as respondent, caused a claim petition for compensation to be filed against his employer, Standard Brands, respondent below and prosecutor here, hereafter referred to as prosecutor. Respondent's answers to the formal questions of his petition indicate that his claim for compensation was based upon the premise that he suffered an accident, on August 3, 1944, namely, a ‘right traumatic inguinal hernia and bilateral strain of inguinal muscles,’ and that this accident arose out of and in the course of his employment.

Prosecutor, substantively stated, denied that respondent suffered a compensable hernia. The proofs are free from dispute; their legal effect is not.

From the record submitted, we ascertain that respondent, a single man, 36 years of age, was employed by prosecutor as a tea blender. In the course of the duties incident to his employment, respondent was obliged to, and did, with the help of an adult fellow employee, lift cases of tea, each of which weighed between 90 to 160 pounds, from the floor on to a vehicle. The lift from the floor to the vehicle was about three feet.

In the afternoon of August 3, 1944, respondent, with the aid of a sixteen year old boy, who had been assigned instead of an adult to help the respondent, was engaged in lifting one of the cases. Apparently unable to hold up his end of the case, the boy dropped it. Respondent held up his end of the case. As a result, he ‘felt sharp pain and strain followed by continuous pain in the abdomen.’ More specifically, as described by respondent, he ‘felt a sharp pain in his right side,’ in his ‘right groin,’ it ‘felt as if the pain shot all over (his) whole abdomen.’ There is no proof that the case either touched or struck respondent's abdomen.

Although respondent could not thereafter work the way he usually worked (he took his time while working), nonetheless, he continued to work from 1:30 p. m. (time of the accident) to the end of the afternoon. He worked the following day. On Monday following the date of the alleged accident, respondent first reported the accident to his foreman who in turn sent respondent to prosecutor's doctor. The doctor examined respondent and sent him back to the foreman with instructions that respondent be placed on light work. This work, while lighter than the work respondent had previously performed, required some light lifting and some bending, all of which respondent did for about three days although the pain in the lower right part of his abdomen persisted. He again reported to the doctor and was again told to go back to his work. Respondent did not do so. He was again examined by the same doctor and was advised to go home and rest up over the week end. Finally, on August 15, 1944, the doctor, after again examining respondent, advised him that a hernia had finally developed and that he should stop work. Admittedly, respondent had no prior hernia. Prosecutor provided respondent with a ‘surgical truss' and paid him for the twelve days work which he lost. Respondent now works for another employer where no lifting is required.

Dr Joseph A. Visconti, a witness for respondent, testified that he had examined respondent on February 26, 1945; that he was wearing a truss on his right side; that there was a visible as well as a palpable mass in the right inguinal area about the size of a hen's egg; that the right external ring was dilated; that there were tenderness, impulse and descent of the hernia which was reducible; and that the left groin was negative, i. e., free from hernia. The doctor's diagnosis was that the hernia suffered was the ‘residual effect of strain on the right inguinal area, associated right indirect, incomplete inguinal hernia.’ He appraised the disability at approximately three per cent of total for the residual effects of strain. And in the further opinion of this doctor, the ‘hernia and the strain, the residual effects of the strain (were) causally related to the incident in question.’ In other words, this doctor was of the mind that respondent ‘had a strain of the right inguinal area.’

Dr. Anthony J. Watman, a witness for the prosecutor, testified that he examined respondent on March 14, 1945. This doctor's diagnosis also was that respondent suffered a ‘right indirect inguinal hernia which should be corrected by operative procedure.’ And this doctor was of the opinion that respondent did not suffer, as set down in the claim petition, from ‘any bilateral strain of inguinal muscles' but did suffer ‘merely from a right indirect inguinal hernia,’ and that the left side was negative.

Dr. Charles Quaglieri, a witness for the prosecutor, is the doctor who examined the respondent on the Monday following the accident and thereafter until August 15, 1944, when the hernia finally developed. The doctor testified that when he examined the respondent he had a slight relaxation of the inguinal ring, external right inguinal ring, with impulse on coughing. And that this is commonly known as a ‘strain in the inguinal region.’ And when asked whether respondent may have a strain of any muscles or ligaments in the right inguinal region which were separate and apart from the hernia, he answered that respondent has a ‘strain around the inguinal ring, surrounding the muscles which are attached to the inguinal ring, and those are the lower fibers of the rectus muscle.’

From what has been written it is quite clear that the case was tried upon the theory of ‘sudden effort or severe strain,’ R.S. 34:15-12, subd. x, N.J.S.A., although respondent's answer to question No. 23, of the claim petition, was concededly comprehensive enough to put in issue a ‘real traumatic hernia,’ resulting from the application of force directly to the abdominal wall, either tearing or puncturing the wall. R.S. 34:15-12, subd. x, N.J.S.A.

In this posture of the proofs, the deputy commissioner in the Bureau answered the posed question requiring decision in the negative. That answer was based upon his finding that the proofs offered for the respondent failed to preponderate the five statutory conditions under which an inguinal hernia, caused by sudden effort of severe strain, is compensable. R.S. 34:15-12, subd. x, N.J.S.A. Respondent's claim petition was dismissed a accordingly.

On appeal, the posed question was answered in the Hudson County Court of Common Pleas in the affirmative. That answer was based upon the finding that respondent's ‘injury was not caused by sudden or ordinary strain or effort, but was the direct result of unusual and extraordinary force’ due to the stated manner in which the accident...