Gunter v. Dayco Corp.

• Decision Date: 12 August 1986
• Docket Number: No. 99A85,99A85
• Citation: 346 S.E.2d 395,317 N.C. 670
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: Lee H. GUNTER, Employee, Plaintiff v. DAYCO CORPORATION ("Dayco-Waynesville"), Employer and National Union Fire Insurance Company, Carrier, Defendants.

Page 395

346 S.E.2d 395

317 N.C. 670

Lee H. GUNTER, Employee, Plaintiff v. DAYCO CORPORATION ("Dayco-Waynesville"), Employer and National Union Fire Insurance Company, Carrier, Defendants.

No. 99A85.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Aug. 12, 1986.

Smith, Patterson, Follin, Curtis, James & Harkavy by Donnell Van Noppen, III, Raleigh, for plaintiff-appellee.

Russell & Greene, P.A. by J. William Russell, Asheville, for defendants-appellants.

EXUM, Justice.

Defendants seek reversal of the Commission's award of workers' compensation to plaintiff for temporary total disability suffered as a result of a ruptured tendon. The sole issue before this Court is whether plaintiff suffered "injury by accident" within the meaning of the Workers' Compensation Act, N.C.G.S. § 97-2(6). We hold that he did.

I.

The facts are not controverted. Plaintiff was employed under a contract which stated that before he could be laid off he was entitled to displace another employee in a different department with less union seniority than he. As a result of economic conditions at defendant Dayco Corporation, plaintiff was notified he would be laid off. Plaintiff exercised his union seniority and was assigned to the curved hose molding department. Plaintiff's old job as a calendar operator in the millroom did not necessitate that plaintiff engage in manual labor or heavy pulling or pushing with his arms. Plaintiff's new job in the curved hose molding department required him to do all these things. Plaintiff's chief responsibility was to twist hose onto a mandrel and then off again after the hose cured in an oven.

Plaintiff spent two days observing how the new job was done and then began doing the work himself. He worked two days without incident. A few hours after he began working on the third day he ruptured a tendon as he was twisting and jerking a hose off the mandrel.

Plaintiff testified he was still learning how to do the new job when he was injured:

I had trouble getting it [the hose] all off, it's sort of hard getting them on and off all of them, but I later found out that the colder the mandrel the harder they are to get off and on. I was slow enough, I guess, I wasn't keeping my mandrels hot.

I testified earlier that the first two days on this new job I watched, and the second two days I worked. As to whether I worked at a regular pace, and whether I did a full day's work, the way that I would have been expected to do in the future, I was doing the work, but I wasn't doing it near as much as I should have been doing, as I would have been expected to do. But it is right that I was doing as much as I could.

With this evidence before it, the Commission, adopting findings of the hearing commissioner, first found as follows:

[The] evidence was uncontroverted ... he [plaintiff] injured his left arm as he 'jerked it and twisted it.'

The evidence is also clear that the plaintiff had not learned how to do the new job when he was injured.

The Commission then made the following additional findings and conclusions:

1. Prior to December 1981 plaintiff had been employed by defendant for some time as a calendar operator in the mill room. In December 1981 he was transferred to a new job building curved hose, and it was on his fifth day at this new job that he was injured. His first two days on the new job plaintiff had observed, and then he had worked two days before he was injured.

2. Plaintiff's job required him to put hose on a tube, where it was cured, and then to take it off. When putting the hose on the tube it was necessary to twist and turn it, and apparently this also was necessary when taking the hose off. It was while jerking and twisting a hose off a tube on December 18, 1981 that plaintiff injured his left arm.

3. Plaintiff's new job involved greater exertion and twisting and jerking movements not involved in his previous job and these circumstances constituted an interruption of his normal work routine. He therefore sustained an injury by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment on December 18, 1981 when he ruptured a tendon in his left arm which had been broken in a previous injury on the job in 1970. Plaintiff was temporarily totally disabled as a result of his injury from December 18, 1981 until March 22, 1982.

4. Plaintiff sustained an injury by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment as a result of the interruption of his normal work routine and is entitled to benefits under the Workers' Compensation Act. G.S. 97-2(6).

Upon the foregoing findings of fact and conclusions of law, the Commission entered an award of compensation at the rate of $210 per week for temporary total disability less an attorney's fee and for medical expenses incurred as a result of the injury. The Court of Appeals affirmed the Commission's award with Judge Webb dissenting on the ground that "the plaintiff was carrying out the duties of his job when he was injured. There is nothing to show the normal work routine of his job was interrupted."

II.

The Workers' Compensation Act extends coverage only to "injury by accident arising out of and in the course of employment." N.C.G.S. § 97-2(6), (18). This Court has interpreted the language of the statute, "injury by accident," to mean an injury caused by accident. "[I]njury by accident implies a result produced by a fortuitous cause.... There must be an accident followed by an injury by such accident which results in harm to the employee before it is compensable under our statute." Slade v. Hosiery Mills, 209 N.C. 823, 825, 184 S.E. 844, 845 (1936). If an employee is injured while carrying on his usual tasks in the usual way the injury does not arise by accident. Jackson v. Highway Commission, 272 N.C. 697, 701, 158 S.E.2d 865, 868 (1968). An accidental cause will be inferred, however, when an interruption of the work routine and the introduction thereby of unusual conditions likely to result in unexpected consequences occurs. Harding v. Thomas & Howard Co., 256 N.C. 427, 429, 124 S.E.2d 109, 111 (1962); Moore v. Sales Co., 214 N.C. 424, 430, 199 S.E. 605, 608 (1938).

In reliance on Adams v. Burlington Industries, 61 N.C.App. 258, 300 S.E.2d 455 (1983), the Industrial Commission and the Court of Appeals agreed in the case at bar that the twisting and jerking movements involved in plaintiff's new job "constituted an interruption of his normal work routine." The claimant's regular duties in Adams involved lifting chairs from a conveyor belt, turning them upside down, and securing them in cartons. His normal work routine required him to lift chairs with his upper torso in a straight posture. On the day of his injury claimant was asked to fill in on the "hot box" because the employee who ordinarily worked there was absent from work. The hot box job involved putting a cardboard tray on the conveyor belt, placing a chair on the tray and covering the chair with plastic. It required claimant to pick up every chair with a twisting motion of his upper torso. Claimant injured his back three and one-half hours after he began working on the hot box. The Court of Appeals held that claimant's normal work routine of lifting chairs with his upper torso in a straight posture was interrupted by the introduction of the turning and twisting movements required by the hot box job; it affirmed the Industrial Commission's conclusion that plaintiff sustained injury by accident. Adams v. Burlington Industries, 61 N.C. App. at 261-62, 300 S.E.2d at 457.

Defendants contend the Court of Appeals erred here in holding that the Commission's findings of fact justified its conclusion of law that the jerking and twisting movements involved in plaintiff's new job interrupted his normal work routine. Defendants do not dispute that the new job of building curved hose required plaintiff to twist and turn his arms in a manner the millroom job did not require. They argue, rather, that as of the time plaintiff was injured, after two days of watching and two days and a few hours of performing it, the turning and jerking...