In re Sponatski

• Citation: 108 N.E. 466,220 Mass. 526
• Parties: In re SPONATSKI. Appeal of STANDARD ACCIDENT INS. CO.
• Decision Date: 31 March 1915
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

220 Mass. 526

108 N.E. 466

In re SPONATSKI. Appeal of STANDARD ACCIDENT INS. CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

March 31, 1915.

Appeal from Superior Court; Suffolk County.

Application by Ellen C. Sponatski for compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act. Compensation having been awarded, and the award confirmed by the Industrial Accident Board, the Standard Accident Insurance Company, insurer, appeals. Affirmed.

Dickson & Knowles, of Boston, for appellant.

Jas. F. Creed and John J. Mansfield, both of Boston, for appellee.

RUGG, C. J.

The deceased employé received an injury in the course of and arising out of his employment through a splash of molten lead into his eye on September 17, 1913. He was treated at a hospital until October 13, 1913, when, as was found by the Industrial Accident Board, ‘while insane as a result of his injury he threw himself from a window and was fatally injured.’ The Board found further that ‘this insanity was brought about and resulted from the injury,’ and that, while the evidence was very close upon that point, the death ‘did result from ‘an uncontrollable impulse and without conscious volition to produce death,’' under Daniels v. New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, 183 Mass. 393, 400, 67 N. E. 424,62 L. R. A. 751. The arbitration committee, whose findings were affirmed and adopted by the Industrial Accident Board, put it this way:

‘We find and decide as a fact that the accident injured the eyesight of the deceased, caused the loss of his eye, caused a nervous and mental derangement, caused insane hallucinations and caused him, while mentally deranged, in a state of insanity and under the influence of hallucination, by an irresistible impulse, to commit suicide, and that the accident was the sole, direct and proximate cause of the suicide.’

The insurer contends that these findings are not warranted by the evidence. That question is open to it, for the substance of the evidence is reported. Pigeon's Case, 216 Mass. 51, 102 N. E. 932.

The burden of proving the essential facts necessary to establisha case warranting the payment of compensation rests upon the dependents in a case arising under the Workmen's Compensation Act as much as it does upon a plaintiff in any proceeding at law. The dependents must go further than simply to show a state of facts which is as equally consistent with no right to compensation as it is with such right. They can no more prevail if factors necessary to support the claim are left to surmise, conjecture, guess or speculation, than can a plaintiff in the ordinary action in tort or contract. A sure foundation must be laid by a preponderance of evidence in support of the claim, before the dependents can succeed. The elements that need to be proved are quite different from those in the ordinary action at law or suit in equity, but, so far as these elements are essential, they must be proved by the same degree of probative evidence. Of course this does not mean, as was said by Lord Loreburn in Marshall v. Owners of Steamship Wild Rose, [1910] A. C. 486, ‘that he must demonstrate his case. It only means, if there is no evidence in his favor upon which a reasonable man can act, he will fail.’ If the evidence, though slight is yet sufficient to make a reasonable man conclude in his favor on the vital points, then his case is proved. But the rational mind must not be left in such uncertainty that these essential elements are not removed from the realm of fancy. Plumb v. Cobden Flour Mills Co., Ltd., [1914] A. C. 62; Barnabas v. Busham Colliery Co., 4 B. W. C. C. 119 (House of Lords); Flecher v. Owners of the Ship Dutchess, [1911] A. C. 671. See also Childs v. American Express Co., 197 Mass. 337, 84 N. E. 128;Bigwood v. Boston & Northern St. Ry., 209 Mass. 345, 95 N. E. 751,35 L. R. A. (N. S.) 113. The Board instructed itself as matter of law, in accordance with the substance of these propositions as requested by the insurer, and no error is shown in this regard.

There was evidence tending to show that, although for a time after the injury the deceased was in his normal temperament, which was hopeful and joyous, he then became silent and moody, and was depressed, and suffered from certain marked hallucinations. He did not appear affectionate as he always theretofore had been toward his wife and young children. There were two witnesses of the event which directly produced his death. One gave the following description:

‘That morning I was making my first visit to the ward. * * * Mr. Sponatski was sitting on the window sill leaning against the frame and his feet were up against the other side. The window was open and he was looking out and I spoke to him and asked him to come down. He turned around and gave me a kind of wild look. I thought he was getting off the window sill. He let one foot down and raised up on the other knee and at that he got up on the window sill and leaped right out. * * * It happened very quick. * * * He had a wild look; he looked as if he was frightened. * * * He appeared as if he had just woke up out of a deep thought. Kind of wild.’

The other said that after he was spoken to--

‘he hesitated a few minutes; he looked as blank; he was undecided what to do; [he had] a very wild, glassy look. He didn't seem to act as though he heard at all-just looked blank. He had a vacant stare as though he didn't see you-as though he was picturing things he didn't see; things in his imagination. He didn't pay a bit of attention to us at all, * * * just as if you were not there.’

The medical examiner who made a post mortem examination of the brain testified that the deceased--

‘did not have any form of insanity, except possibly general paresis, but for, any other form I could not express an opinion.’

An alienist of experience testified that probably there was developed from the accident a ‘mental condition’ accompanied by ‘hallucinations and delusions and as a result committed suicide.’ After his death a letter, which the Board decided was written by him, was found under his pillow, as follows:

‘My wife folks are not to blame for anything my wife was a pur woman when I married her she be is pure to this day it is all my own fault.

‘[Signed] Martin Sponatski.’

Aside from this there was no evidence tending to show that he had contemplated suicide or that the jumping from the window was the exercise of even a ‘moderately intelligent power of choice.’

The letter does not seem to us necessarily indicative of a suicidal purpose. It was not signed by the name of the deceased, which was Charles. J. Sponatski. It apparently was wholly the product of a disordered intellect. It is as consistent with some other phantom of an unbalanced imagination as it is with a volition to end his life. The circumstances of the leap from the window as narrated by all the eyewitnesses point rather to ungovernable lunacy than to the volition even of a diseased mind. The findingin this respect, although hanging on a rather slender thread of evidence, is not unsupported. Therefore it must stand.

[3] This decision rests upon the rule established in Daniels v. New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, 183 Mass. 393, 67 N. E. 424,62 L. R. A. 751. That rule applies to cases...