Hill v. Thomas S. Gassner Co.

• Decision Date: 11 December 1936
• Docket Number: 250-1936
• Parties: Hill v. Thomas S. Gassner Company et al., Appellants
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

188 A. 382

124 Pa.Super. 217

Hill v. Thomas S. Gassner Company et al., Appellants

No. 250-1936

Superior Court of Pennsylvania

December 11, 1936

Argued October 2, 1936

Appeal by defendants, from judgment of C. P. No. 1, Phila. Co March T., 1935, No. 1671, in case of Mrs. Mary G. Hill v Thomas S. Gassner Company and Employers Liability Assurance Corporation.

Appeal from Workmen's Compensation Board.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the Superior Court.

Award of board affirmed and judgment entered against defendants opinion by Parry, J. Defendants appealed.

Error assigned, among others, was judgment.

Judgment affirmed.

George H. Detweiler, for appellant.

Thomas M. J. Regan, with him Herman Toll, for appellee.

Before Keller, P. J., Cunningham, Baldrige, Stadtfeld, Parker, James and Rhodes, JJ.

OPINION

Baldrige, J.

This appeal is from an award granted to a widow in a workmen's compensation case.

The deceased, a regular employee of the defendant company, was, on October 23, 1930, engaged in erecting fire doors in the Art Museum located on the Parkway in Philadelphia. At about 11:15 a. m., being unable to find some required bolts on the premises, he left, in an automobile which he owned and maintained, to get them from either the hardware store or his employer's shop. Officer Boeger testified that he saw the deceased about 11:30 "struggling -- he had trouble with a car at 25th & Fairmount Avenue. The car was facing down 25th Street and he was in back of it trying to hold it back, laying up against it. I walked down to the corner to see what was wrong and he had engine trouble and there was a few of the children from the school helping him to push the car . . . . By the Referee: Q. He was running the car at the time? A. No, sir, he still had trouble pushing it around, this was about eleven-thirty . . . . Q. And then you saw him get the car up the hill? A. Part way up and the next thing I seen him out on Fairmount Avenue coming down. Q. How long later was the next time? A. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes later." The deceased evidently succeeded, with great effort, in getting the car to the top of the grade, and then this officer saw him "leaning against it to hold the car back." Norman Harper testified that at 12:20 he noticed the car parked halfway against the curb, with the deceased looking in the hood and bending over the engine; that he straightened up a little and then fell over backwards, and died immediately.

It was not disputed that the deceased died of a heart condition. At the first hearing, Dr. Burke, the coroner's physician, testified that in his opinion the cause of death was chronic pericarditis. The referee found that he died from natural causes and disallowed compensation. The board, on appeal, concluded that the deceased was furthering the interest of his employer at the time of his death; but returned the record for the purpose of calling an impartial medical expert to determine whether deceased's death was due to an accident or to natural causes.

Dr. William D. Stroud was called at this hearing and testified that in his opinion the deceased died of an occlusion of a coronary vessel, or that certain changes went on in the heart muscles which allowed clots to form in the left ventricle and a piece of this clot was thrown out of the left ventricle and lodged in a vessel in the brain, causing the sudden death. He stated further: "I don't feel that we can say positively whether [death] was due to the physical effort or whether it might have occurred without the physical effort. It is perfectly possible that the physical effort might have been a contributing factor and that is, I think, as far as I can go."

The board remitted the record once more to the referee for the purpose of recalling the coroner's physician to elicit more specific testimony as to his findings, so that the parties might be able to bring in medical experts to testify on the basis of these post mortem findings and other evidence. Dr. Burke, at this hearing, gave further testimony of the result of his examination of the deceased.

Dr. Stambul, the claimant's physician, testified that the inflammation of the membrane of the sac covering the heart affected the heart muscle itself and the exertion strained the impaired heart of the deceased and caused his death, that the time elapsing between the exertion and death did not change his opinion, and that a person with such a diseased heart might have a coronary occlusion or dilated left ventricle and live for a number of hours after the exertion.

The referee, at this hearing, found as a fact that the deceased, in pushing the automobile, was subject to an unusual exertion which over-taxed or brought on an undue strain upon a defective heart and aggravated the previous condition of pericarditis and caused his death; and awarded compensation, which was sustained by the board and the court below.

Defendant appealed, alleging that there was no accident, that the deceased died of natural causes, and that there was no competent evidence to establish that the deceased at the time of his death was engaged in the course of his employment.

The appellants stress the point that Dr. Stambul's testimony was so conflicting that it should not have been given weight by the compensation authorities. It is argued that in cross-examination he contradicted his testimony respecting the cause of deceased's death in adhering to his answer to which his attention was called, in response to a question asked at the original hearing by appellants' attorney, which was as follows: "And isn't it fair to assume that if he had a strain or any condition of over-exertion so severe as to cause a cessation of the heart action at the time it did cease, that the over-exercise would have caused immediate prostration of the man following that exertion?" The doctor stated that...