Hicks v. Vennerbeck & Clase Co.

• Decision Date: 05 May 1987
• Docket Number: No. 85-82-M,85-82-M
• Citation: 525 A.2d 37
• Parties: Raymond HICKS v. VENNERBECK & CLASE COMPANY. P.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 37

525 A.2d 37

Raymond HICKS v. VENNERBECK & CLASE COMPANY.

No. 85-82-M.P.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

May 5, 1987.

Barry J. Kusinitz, Temkin & Miller Ltd., Providence, Van L. Hayhow, James M. Lewis P.C., Attleboro, for plaintiff.

Robert J. Quigley, Higgins, Cavanagh & Conley, Providence, for defendant.

OPINION

WEISBERGER, Justice.

This workers' compensation case comes before us on the employee's petition for certiorari to review a final decree of the appellate commission reversing the trial commissioner's order to pay compensation for a continuing period of total incapacity and ordering instead payment for a closed period. The facts pertinent to the employee's petition are as follows.

As of April 1982, Vennerbeck & Clase Company (Vennerbeck), had employed Raymond Hicks for one year as a "flat stock worker." In this job Hicks processed various types of metals for use as jewelry stock, flattening metal bars in a roll mill and washing the pieces in tanks of sulfuric acid. When Hicks reported to work on the morning of April 19, 1982, he discovered that the plant was temporarily closed because fumes, escaping from the sulfuric-acid tanks, permeated the plant. While Hicks and his coworkers waited outside, firefighters wearing oxygen tanks and masks ventilated the plant with large fans. One and a half hours later, the workers were permitted to enter the plant. Following instructions, Hicks delayed performing his usual duties for two hours while he cleaned his roll mill to remove a residue of sulfuric acid that had settled out from the fumes. From midmorning until lunch and then again after lunch, Hicks worked at the sulfuric-acid tanks, washing the stock. Just before lunch Hicks noted a feeling of lightheadedness and experienced a slight headache and throat irritation. By two o'clock in the afternoon, the headache and throat irritation increased to the point that Hicks notified his foreman that he was unable to complete the shift. Returning home, Hicks went to bed immediately. At two o'clock in the morning he awakened, perspiring profusely and experiencing severe chest pains and a numbness in his right arm.

The next day, despite a severe burning sensation that radiated from his throat to his chest, Hicks reported to work and completed the shift. That night, however, the burning sensation intensified, causing Hicks to seek medical attention at his local hospital. After a brief evaluation, emergency room personnel referred Hicks to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, Dr. Charles Faber, who on the basis of a laryngoscopic examination immediately instituted a treatment regime for contact laryngitis. When the prescribed treatment failed to alleviate the burning sensations and the throat irritation, the specialist consulted with a medical internist, Dr. Richard Robin, and scheduled further diagnostic procedures designed to identify varying disorders of the throat.

Interpreting, in light of Hicks's subjective complaints, a routine electrocardiogram that had been performed to document Hicks's cardiac status before submitting him to the more stressful of the diagnostic procedures scheduled, the medical internist formed the opinion that Hicks may have recently suffered a myocardial infarction. Canceling the scheduled procedure as too stressful for a possible heart patient, the internist admitted Hicks to the hospital on April 27, 1982, for diagnosis and treatment of the suspected heart attack. During this five-week hospitalization and for a number of months following the hospitalization, Hicks remained under the care of the throat specialist. Also during this initial hospitalization Hicks was evaluated by a cardiologist, Dr. Jack Klie, who together with the internist treated him after the hospitalization for suspected cardiac problems. In addition to this continuing out-patient care, Hicks was readmitted to the hospital on September 8, 1982, for a ten-day period to evaluate a severe episode of chest pain.

Between the two hospitalizations, Hicks filed on June 15, 1982, an original petition with the Workers' Compensation Commission, seeking disability, medical, and dependency benefits on the ground that his personal injuries, namely tracheobronchitis and myocardial infarction, occurred as the result of his inhalation of the sulfuric-acid fumes that permeated Vennerbeck's plant on April 19, 1982. The trial commissioner conducted hearings on the petition on four days spread over the course of several months.

Testifying on the first day of the hearing, Hicks recounted his work assignment and the events at the plant the morning that the fumes escaped. He testified that upon entering the plant that morning, he found the atmosphere hot and heavy with the odor of sulfuric acid. After describing the chest pains and numbness that wakened him the first night after the sulfuric-acid incident, Hicks testified that he had never before experienced those sensations. On cross-examination Hicks stated that he continued to experience intermittent chest pains, that he experienced numbness whenever he lifted his arms over his head, and that he believed that it was his heart condition rather than his throat ailment that prevented his return to work.

Although the throat specialist did not testify, letters summarizing his evaluation and treatment of Hicks were admitted into evidence. In the letters, the throat specialist stated that he had diagnosed Hicks's throat irritation as acute contact laryngitis directly caused by the inhalation of sulfuric-acid fumes. He further stated that as of June 4, 1982, all symptomatology of a laryngeal disorder had resolved and consequently any disability related to the laryngitis should have also resolved. Cautioning that he was not a cardiologist, he opined that a stressful event, such as exposure to a marked volume of toxic fumes, could trigger a myocardial infarction in a person who is predisposed to cardiovascular disease. Beyond this generalization, the throat specialist did not render a professional opinion concerning Hicks's cardiac status.

Testifying on the second day of the hearing, the medical internist stated that Hicks was discharged after the April hospitalization with the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction and tracheobronchitis. He further testified that at that time he was of the opinion that exposure to the sulfuric-acid fumes triggered the cardiac disorder and rendered Hicks totally disabled. The internist stated that after Hicks's second hospitalization, he formed the opinion that Hicks had an underlying coronary-artery disease that caused intermittent chest pain by restricting the flow of blood to the heart. He stated that this coronary insufficiency and the second hospitalization "seemed to be related" to the sulfuric-acid incident because the incident could have aggravated the underlying coronary-artery disease, assuming the disease pre-existed the incident. Citing coronary-artery disease as the cause, the internist testified that Hicks remained totally disabled through the second hospitalization to January 17, 1983, the date of the internist's last evaluation before testifying. On cross-examination the internist acknowledged that his specialty was internal medicine, not cardiology; that he could only state with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that, in his opinion, Hicks had sustained a recent myocardial infarction at the time of the April hospitalization, but that he could not state with any certainty when the infarction actually occurred; and that although he assumed that Hicks suffered from coronary-artery disease at the time of the sulfuric-acid incident, he could not render an opinion concerning the possible existence of that condition before his first examination of Hicks on April 27, 1982.

Testifying on behalf of Hicks on the third day of the hearing, the cardiologist offered his opinion that it was possible, but not certain, that Hicks sustained a myocardial infarction triggered by the inhalation of the sulfuric-acid fumes permeating Vennerbeck's plant on April 19, 1982. He also stated that he was of the opinion that as of January 24, 1983, Hicks remained totally disabled because he continued to experience chest pain upon exertion.

On the final day of the hearing the cardiologist testified again, stating that he had altered his initial assessment of Hicks's medical status on the basis of a cardiac catheterization that he performed on Hicks subsequent to his previous testimony. Explaining that a catheterization...