Lane v. Horn & Hardart Baking Co.

• Citation: 261 Pa. 329,104 A. 615
• Decision Date: 06 May 1918
• Docket Number: 346
• Parties: Lane v. Horn & Hardart Baking Co., Appellant
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

104 A. 615

261 Pa. 329

Lane v. Horn & Hardart Baking Co., Appellant

No. 346

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

May 6, 1918

Argued March 25, 1918

Appeal, No. 346, Jan. T., 1917, by defendant, from judgment of C.P. No. 2, Philadelphia Co., Sept. T., 1917, No. 5224 affirming decision of the Workmen's Compensation Board allowing claim, in case of Mary Lane v. Horn & Hardart Baking Co. Affirmed.

Appeal from Workmen's Compensation Board. Before BARRATT, P.J.

The opinion of the Supreme Court states the facts.

The court affirmed the decision of the Workmen's Compensation Board. Defendant appealed.

Error assigned was, inter alia, the order of the court.

The assignments of error are overruled, and the judgment sustaining the allowance of compensation is affirmed.

Alfred D. Wiler, for appellant. -- As a general rule, injuries which are suffered from so-called "acts of God," such as sunstroke, freezing, lightning, etc., do not arise out of the employment of an injured employee, for the reason that such casualties are risks which the whole citizenry takes: Fensler v. Associated Supply Co., 1 Cal. Ind. Acc. Comm. 447; Young v. Northern California Power Co., 1 Cal. Ind. Acc. Comm. 88; Laspada v. Public Service Ry. Co., 38 N.J.L.J. 102; Burke v. Ballantine & Sons, 38 N.J. Law J. 105; Zoler v. American Steel & Wire Co., Ill. Ind. Bd., 1915, 12 Neg. & Com. C. 319; Mooney v. Illinois Steel Co., Ill. Ind. Bd., No. 740, 12 Neg. & Com. C. 321; Tank v. City of Milwaukee, 3 Ann. Rep. Wis. Ind. Comm. 80.

Louis Levinson, for appellee. -- By injury the act contemplates violence to the physical structure of the body: Smith v. General Crushed Stone Co., 2 Dept. Rep. 1022; Ress v. Youngstown Sheet and Table Co., 1 Bull. Ohio Ind. Comm. 194; In re Huebner, Ohio Ind. Comm. No. 108, 515.

The cases clearly show that heat stroke is an accident as contemplated by the various compensation acts: Boardman v. Scott & Whitworth et al., 85 Law Times 502; Lord Macnaughten in Fenton v. Thorley & Co., 19 T.L.R. 684; Ismay, Imrie & Co. v. Williamson, Law Reps. 1908, A.C. 437; Maskery v. The Lancashire Shipping Co., 7 B.W.C.C. 428; Andrew v. Failsworth Industrial Society, 90 L.T. 611; Pack v. Prudential Casualty Co., 170 Ky. 47; Com. Traveler's Assn. v. London Guarantee, Etc., Co., 10 Manitoba Rep. 537; Case of Murray, Op. Sol. Dep. C. & L.P. 201.

The injury was sustained in the "course of employment" of deceased: Fensler v. Associated Supply Co., 1 Cal. Ind. Acc. Comm. 447; Young v. Northern Cal. Power Co., 1 Cal. Ind. Acc. Comm. 88; Laspada v. Public Service Ry. Co., 38 N.J.L.J. 102; Burke v. Ballantine, 38 N.J.L.J. 105; Mooney v. Illinois Steel Co., Ill. Ind. Bd. No. 740, 12 Neg. & Com. C. 321; Zoler v. American Steel Co., Ill. Ind. Bd. 1915, 12 Neg. & Com. C. 319; Mary Tomazezki v. Carnegie Steel Co., 2 Dep. Rep. 2176; Dorrance v. New England Pin Co., Conn. Superior Court, 1 Nat. Comp. Journ. 23; In re McNicol, 215 Mass. 497; In re Patterson, Wilde & Co. and Employers' Liability Assur. Corp., Lim., 102 N.E. 697; Bryant v. Fissel, 86 A. 458; City of Milwaukee v. Miller et al., 144 N.W. 188.

Before MESTREZAT, POTTER, MOSCHZISKER, FRAZER and WALLING, JJ.

OPINION

MR. JUSTICE MOSCHZISKER:

Mary Lane claimed compensation, under the Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736, for the alleged accidental death of her husband, an employee of defendant; the claim was allowed by the Workmen's Compensation Board, and this decision was affirmed by the court below; defendant has appealed.

Upon the facts involved, Commissioner Scott says: "This case comes before the board on a petition for determination of compensation due the claimant under agreed facts. The statement of facts precludes any other cause of death than that of heat exhaustion or prostration due to the heated condition of the atmosphere. The claimant's deceased husband was overcome by heat while working at the defendant's lunch counter, on a hot August day in 1917, and died within two hours. There is nothing in the statement to show that [the temperature of] the place where the employee was working was hotter than the outside atmosphere, or that he was affected by different heat conditions than prevailed in the community at large."

On the governing rules of law, the commissioner correctly states: "The term 'personal injury' in our act is confined to injuries of accidental origin and such diseases as naturally result therefrom, and must be held to include any form of bodily harm or incapacity [accidentally] caused by [either] external violence or physical force. . . . A stroke by lightning, a stroke from the direct rays of the sun, a heat stroke, or heat prostration, are untoward, unexpected mishaps and accidental injuries within the meaning of the act. . . . It is immaterial whether the heat prostration is produced by artificial heat or by the natural heat of the sun, directly or through the heated atmosphere, if the exhaustion comes from heat in the course of employment."

In cases such as the one at bar, the character and cause of the injury must be considered in order to determine whether the results complained of are properly attributable to "accident" within the meaning of that term as used in the Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736, supra; for wherever death is mentioned in the statute, it means death resulting only from unforeseen violence to the physical structure of the body and its resultant effects (Section 301, P.L. 738), or, in other words, death from "an accident" happening in the course of the deceased person's happening in the course of the deceased person's employment, as distinguished from either ordinary or occupational disease developed during the course of such employment, these latter not being within contemplation of the act. This subject is fully discussed in McCauley v. Imperial Woolen Co., 261 Pa. 312.

The learned commissioner is not without authority in holding heat prostration, under circumstances such as those at bar, to fall within the meaning of the word "accident" as that term is employed in modern compensation legislation and, we may add, as it is used in the law of insurance. In Ismay, Imrie & Co. v. Williamson, Law Rep. A.C. 1908, 437, 439, Lord Loreburn, speaking for the House of Lords, said: "This man died from an accident. What killed him was a heat stroke coming suddenly and unexpectedly upon him while at work. Such a stroke is an unusual effect of a known cause, often, no doubt, threatened, but generally averted by precautions, which experience, in this instance, had not taught. It was an unlooked for mishap in the course of his employment. In common language, it was a case of accidental death." See also Maskery v. Lancashire Shipping Co., decided by the Court of Appeals, England, and reported in Butterworth's Workmen's Compensation Cases, Volume 7, pp. 428, 430, where the engineer on a steamship met his death from a heat stroke while crossing the Red sea. The contention of defendant...