Hill v. Edward F. Guth Co., 21324.

• Decision Date: 06 March 1931
• Docket Number: No. 21324.,21324.
• Citation: 35 S.W.2d 924
• Parties: HILL v. EDWARD F. GUTH CO. et al.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

35 S.W.2d 924

HILL v. EDWARD F. GUTH CO. et al.

No. 21324.

St. Louis Court of Appeals. Missouri.

March 6, 1931.

Rehearing Denied March 19, 1931.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court; John T. Fitzsimmons, Judge.

"Not to be officially published."

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Law by Jessie Hill, claimant, opposed by the Edward F. Guth Company, employer, and T. H. Mastin & Company, insurer. Judgment affirming an award of compensation, and the employer and insurer appeal.

Affirmed.

Fordyce, Holliday & White and E. C. Hartman, all of St. Louis, for appellants.

Wm. R. Schneider and Joseph J. Cooney, both of St. Louis, for respondent.

SUTTON, C.

This is an action under the Workmen's Compensation Law (Laws 1927, p. 490, as amended).

The plaintiff, Jessie Hill, is the widow of Robert M. Hill, an employee of defendant Edward F. Guth Company, whose liability was insured by the defendant T. H. Mastin & Company. The Workmen's Compensation Commission awarded the plaintiff $250 for medical aid, $150 for burial expenses, and $20 a week for 324.7 weeks or until the death or remarriage of the plaintiff, with remainder to Dorothy Hill, who is a daughter of the deceased. From this award the defendants appealed to the circuit court. From the judgment of the circuit court affirming the award of the commission, the defendants have appealed to this court.

The defendants urge here that the plaintiff, having failed to prove by competent evidence that the death of the deceased was caused by an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment, is not entitled to an award of compensation, and that therefore the court erred in affirming the award of the commission. The defendants insist that the only evidence to show that the death of the deceased was caused by an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment was hearsay evidence, which is incompetent and insufficient to support the award.

Plaintiff testified: "My husband worked for the Edward F. Guth Company for about six years. He came home at noon on December 15, 1928. He said to me: `Mama, I bumped my shin down at work there.' He showed me his shin. I bandaged it, and rubbed it with mercurochrome. There was just a small injury on the shin, below the knee, five or six, or maybe seven, inches below the knee, right on the front of the shin. He did not ask me to put mercurochrome on it, he just showed it to me, and I just put it on. He did not go back to work that afternoon; that was on Saturday. He stayed at home on Sunday, and on Monday he called Dr. Kemp. He died Christmas Day. He got steadily worse from the time he was hurt. Prior to this day when he came home and said he had bumped his shin he had never had any trouble with that leg. He hadn't done anything around the house where he could have bumped it. When he left home to go to his work on the morning he was injured he was in the best of spirits and feeling fine. He usually left his work at twelve o'clock, and would get home about twenty-five minutes after twelve. We lived about ten or fifteen blocks from the factory where he worked. If the weather was nice he would walk home. I think he walked home the day he was hurt. The wound I saw on his shin was a fresh wound. It looked like it had just been done. The skin was just broken. It looked real fresh. He did not work around the house any place where he was liable to bump his shin. I do not know what he did at the factory, I was never down there. When he came home on the day he was hurt, he arrived about twenty-five minutes after twelve. He said: `I bumped my shin down on the table leg a little while before I quit work.' He quit work at twelve o'clock. The wound just looked like it had bumped against something and broke the skin."

Damon Marshall testified: "I was working at the Guth Company on December 15, 1928. As near as I can tell, Mr. Hill got hurt by bumping his shin on a table in the plating room, while he was at work. I did not see him bump it. The first I knew of it he just said to me: `Well, I bumped my leg on the table.' I said: `How bad did you hurt it?' And he said: `I just knocked a little skin off of it.' I could not say how long after it happened it was when he told me that; it was not over ten or fifteen minutes. All he said was he just bumped his leg on the table and knocked the skin off. He could have bumped his shin at the work he was doing. There was a small table there, and on the bottom of it, as much as seven or eight inches from the floor, was a cross-bar. We washed this floor between eleven-thirty and twelve o'clock, and the floor was wet and slick. I know it was after we had been throwing the water on to wash the floor that he told me about being hurt. It was about fifteen minutes to twelve when he told me. He did not say that he had slipped, he just said he had bumped his shin on the table there. If you stood up by the table and your foot slipped underneath the cross-bar, it would bump your shin. If you stood against the table your foot might slip underneath the cross-bar and you would strike your shin on this cross-bar. There is also a tank there, and it has a little stool on it; you have to step on that stool to tank a plate, and you could bump your shin on that. Mr....