Gaudette v. Miller

• Decision Date: 29 December 1948
• Docket Number: No. A-20.,A-20.
• Parties: GAUDETTE v. MILLER et al.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court

62 A.2d 749

GAUDETTE

v.MILLER et al.

No. A-20.

Superior Court of New JerseyAppellate Division, Part B.

Dec. 29, 1948.

Appeal from Court of Common Pleas, Hudson County; John Drewen, Judge.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Albert Gaudette, claimant, opposed by Walter C. Miller and the New Jersey Manufacturers Casualty Insurance Company. From a judgment affirming an award of compensation, the respondents appeal.

Judgment reversed.

Before McGEEHAN, Senior Judge, and DONGES and COLIE, JJ.

Isidor Kalisch, of Newark, for appellants.

David Roskein, of Newark (John A. Laird, of Newark, of counsel), for respondent.

COLIE, Judge.

This appeal is before the court by virtue of a writ of certiorari allowed prior to September 15, 1948. The appeal seeks to reverse a judgment of the Hudson County Court of Common Pleas affirming an award of compensation to the petitioner. The question before us is whether or not the petitioner suffered an accident arising out of his employment.

We find the facts to be as follows: The petitioner, aged sixty, had been a carpenter for twenty years. On March 10, 1947 he had been working on the same job for the past three weeks. On that date, he commenced work about eight in the morning and continued until noon. After lunch he resumed work and about three o'clock was seized with a sharp pain through his chest. The work consisted of cutting 2 4 beams which were just above the level of petitioner's head when standing on a scaffold five feet above floor level. Up to the time of the seizure he had cut between twenty or thirty beams and he testified that it was a routine job for a carpenter and that the position of the beams to be cut required him to ‘sort of kinked over a little bit.’ The medical witnesses were divided on the question of whether or not there was a causal connection between the work and the onset of the occlusion.

The leading case dealing with cardiac failure is Lohndorf v. Peper Bros. Paint Co., Sup.1946, 134 N.J.L. 156, 46 A.2d 439, 441, affirmed Err. & App.1947, 135 N.J.L. 352, 52 A.2d 61. Mr. Justice Oliphant for the Supreme Court after pointing out the presumption that any death from heart disease is the result of natural causes, said: ‘An accident is ‘an unlooked for mishap or untoward event which is not expected or designed.’ Geltman v. Reliable Linen & Supply Co., 128 N.J.L. 443, 25 A.2d 894, 139 A.L.R. 1465, ‘an unintended or unexpected occurrence’, Bollinger v. Wagaraw Building &...