Fleming v. Appleton Co.

• Decision Date: 13 January 1949
• Docket Number: 16170.
• Parties: FLEMING v. APPLETON CO. et al.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

51 S.E.2d 363

214 S.C. 81

FLEMING v. APPLETON CO. et al.

No. 16170.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

January 13, 1949

Stephen Nettles, of Greenville, for appellants.

R L. Ballentine and Leon W. Harris, both of Anderson, for respondent.

STUKES, Justice.

Respondent was awarded workmen's compensation for total disability and from affirmance by the Court of Common Pleas the employer and its insurance carrier have appealed upon the grounds that there was no proof of injury by accident and, on the contrary, the evidence establishes that respondent's disability is due to disease.

He had been employed in other departments of the appellant cotton mill and was transferred about Nov. 1, 1945, to the trucking department where heavy boxes of cotton goods, weighing up to six or seven hundred pounds, were pushed by respondent and others on carts or trucks, which was heavier work than he had been doing before. On the third day on this new job, he said in testimony, 'all at once something hit me just like that; I went all to pieces, a nervous condition, and I have been that way ever since.' He was taken home in the automobile of a fellow-worker, to a hospital a day or so later and dismissed on the next. He was examined afterward by physicians whose testimony will be presently stated. The examining doctor at the hospital was not available as a witness and the hospital record was not introduced.

Quoting further from respondent's testimony before the Commissioner, after saying that he had recently unsuccessfully tried to do farm work, he described his condition, as follows: 'Something seems like gets all over me and I get all to pieces. I don't know what's the matter with me, and the doctors, I don't reckon they know. If they do they ain't never done me no good, I know that. I just get all to pieces; I don't know what happens to me; and I have been that way ever since that night.' He further said that he could not tell the cause unless quoting again, 'it was straining on them big boxes and getting too hot. I got awful hot, couldn't get my breath hardly.' He added that, 'it did not seem to be so hot, but I got awful hot that night.' As stated, it was November and naturally there was no evidence of high temperature.

Respondent offered a medical witness, Dr. Harris, who testified that he treated respondent from Nov. 5 to Nov. 18, 1945, for low blood pressure, anemia and tremor of the hands, a sort of St Vitus dance. The latter was a fine tremor of the hands which rendered the patient unable to work with them; 'nervous exhaustion,' he said, 'if you want to call it that', which could have one of several causes. He gave as his opinion that respondent simply gave out at his work, which latter had a tendency to cause it or caused it. This testimony was qualified, practically withdrawn, on cross-examination by the doctor's statement that he did not know the cause, which might have been lack of food, lack of sleep or excessive drinking and he reiterated that he treated respondent for low blood pressure, nervousness and anemia. He said that exhaustion from overwork would probably be relived by rest and that failure to work would develop a mania for not working which some individuals cannot control. The witness had not talked to respondent recently and declined to give a present diagnosis.

Another physician, Dr. Rainey, testified in behalf of appellants. He examined respondent on May 24, 1946 and said that he found no organic disease and was given no history of injury. The symptoms were moist hands and a coarse tremor and variability of the pulse rate which resulted in a diagnosis of, quoting 'neurocirculatory asthenia, or soldier's heart, which is what they call it in the Army, and on the basis of constitutional inadequacy.' The witness was asked to explain this diagnosis, with the following result: 'A. Well, those individuals have a certain physical setup; they are unstable individuals. They find it impossible to apply themselves to any stated task with any degree of regularity and with any degree of efficiency, and they have profuse sweating under the arms and they have cold, moist hands and a coarse tremor of the hands, fingers.

'Q. What causes the tremor, Doctor; can you tell us that? A. It fits in with the general course that these people take and it's on the basis of constitutional inadequacy or lack of--well, I think that just explains it better than anything, constitutional inadequacy. It was one of the great causes for individuals being disqualified for service in the armed forces, and it was probably the cause of the greatest number of hospital days in the Army of any other thing. In the Army it was just a question of keeping them in the hospital long enough to get them out.

'Q. Would you say it was due to overwork? A. No; people have it and never hit a lick.

'Q. And you found nothing organically wrong with this man at all? A. No.'

The following is from the cross-examination of this medical witness and concluded his testimony:

'Q. You testified a...