Madore v. New Departure Mfg. Co.

• Decision Date: 30 July 1926
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: MADORE v. NEW DEPARTURE MFG. CO. ET AL.

134 A. 259

104 Conn. 709

MADORE v. NEW DEPARTURE MFG. CO. ET AL.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

July 30, 1926

Appeal from Superior Court, Hartford County; Christopher L. Avery Judge.

Proceeding for compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Joseph S. Madore, employee, opposed by the New Departure Manufacturing Company, employer, and another. From a judgment affirming an award of the Compensation Commissioner for claimant and dismissing the appeal therefrom, opponents appeal. Error and judgment set aside, with direction to enter judgment sustaining appeal.

Motion to strike out compensation commissioner's findings and make substitutions is preferable to motion to find additional inconsistent facts.

William E. Thomas and William J. Larkin, Jr., both of Waterbury, for appellants.

Richard H. Deming, of Hartford, for appellee.

Argued before WHEELER, C.J., and CURTIS, MALTBIE, HAINES, and HINMAN, JJ.

WHEELER, C.J.

The fundamental question of law upon this appeal is whether the court erred in holding that the conclusion of the commissioner--that the tuberculosis from which the claimant suffers arose out of his employment with the defendant manufacturing company--was not inconsistent with the subordinate facts found by him. We will first restate what conditions must exist in order to support the conclusion that a disease, such as tuberculosis, arose out of the employment, and next determine what, if any, corrections of the finding must be made, and then make application of the rule of law as stated, to the facts found, as they may be corrected by this court.

Compensation cannot be awarded an employee under our Workmen's Compensation Act (Pub. Acts 1913, c. 138, as amended) unless he has sustained a personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment. The subordinate facts found must satisfy these statutory requirements. The decision of the point as to whether the injury claimed to have been suffered by the claimant arose out of his employment will determine the appeal. " An injury arises out of an employment when it occurs in the course of the employment and is the result of a risk involved in the employment or incident to it, or to the conditions under which it is required to be performed. The injury is thus a natural or necessary consequence or incident of the employment or of the conditions under which it is carried on. Sometimes the employment will be found to directly cause the injury, but more often it arises out of the conditions incident to the employment. But in every case there must be apparent some causal connection between the injury and the employment or the conditions under which it is required to be performed, before the injury can be found to arise out of the employment." Marchiatello v. Lynch Realty Co., 94 Conn. 260, 263, 108 A. 799. " The injury," we say, in Gonier v. Chase Companies, Inc., 97 Conn. 46, 49, 115 A. 677, 678 (19 A.L.R. 83) " is the result of a risk involved in or connected with the employment, when there is present in the circumstances of the accident some causal connection between the employment, or the conditions under which it is required to be performed, and the injury."

That an injury arose out of the employment can never be held unless there is found a causal connection between the injury and the employment, or the conditions under which the employee is required to carry on his work. Larke v. Hancock Mutual Life Ins. Co., 90 Conn. 309, 97 A. 320, L.R.A. 1916E, 584; McNicol's Case, 215 Mass. 497, 102 N.E. 697, L.R.A. 1916A, 306. The causal connection required to be established is that the employment was the proximate cause of the injury, and this rule obtains whether the injury be the result of accident or disease. Perhaps as readily understood an explanation of the sense in which we use proximate cause as any is that found in Monroe v. Hartford St. Ry. Co., 76 Conn. 201, 207, 56 A. 498, 501. " When an event is followed in natural sequence by a result it is adapted to produce, or aid in producing, that result is a consequence of the event, and the event is the cause of the result." An injury is proximately caused by the employment when the chain of causation between it and the employment is so closely related as to be directly caused by it, or by the conditions under which it is required to be performed. City of Milwaukee v. Industrial Commission, 160 Wis. 238, 151 N.W. 247; Hartz v. Faience Co., 90 Conn. 539, 97 A. 1020; Larke v. Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., supra.

Before he can make a valid award, the trier must determine that there is a direct causal connection between the injury whether it be the result of accident or disease, and the employment. The question he must answer is: Was the employment a proximate cause of the disablement, or was the injured condition merely contemporaneous or coincident with the employment? If it was the latter, there can be no award made. If the former, there may be. This determination is often exceedingly difficult to make. Discrimination and sound judgment are indispensable to right decision. Necessarily the decision is often controlled by the conclusion reached by medical experts. That opinion, if relied upon by the commissioner or trier, must be found to be an honest one, and one which the rational mind would reasonably reach upon the established facts. If upon the facts the medical expert is merely willing to testify that the disease might have, or was likely to have, resulted from the employment, or the conditions under which it was carried on, but is unwilling to go further and testify that in his opinion, taking into consideration all of the facts presented and considering every other hypothesis suggested, it was reasonably probable that the disease resulted from the employment, and therefore the employment was its direct cause the commissioner or court should not conclude that the disease did result from the employment, unless the facts outside this medical testimony fairly warrant that conclusion. Mauchline v. State Ins. Fund, 279 Pa. 524, 124 A. 168. We do not intend by this to exclude from consideration the testimony of the medical witness who merely states that the accident or disease might have resulted from the employment, or the conditions under which it was carried on; it may be invaluable, as an expression of a cautious opinion, in corroboration of other testimony. What we do intend is that the trier cannot himself reach a definite conclusion when he has nothing to rely upon but the opinion of a medical witness who is unable, with all of his professional learning and experience, to reach the definite conclusion which the court is required to reach upon the same facts in making an award.

The fact that injuries, whether from accident or disease, happen contemporaneously or coincident with the employment, affords no basis for an award under our act. Injuries of that nature which arise in the course of the employment, unless they also arise out of the employment, do not come within our act. Arguments addressed to the court expressing apprehension that decisions in cases of disease will result in converting our act into an act for health insurance, and make it a substitute for disability or old age pensions, are wholly gratuitous. Our decisions do not point in that direction, and their reasoning and conclusions cannot be reconciled with any such interpretation. The injury must arise out of the employment, and while that provision remains in our act there must be a causal connection between employment and injury, and such a causal connection is not a basis upon which health insurance or disability or old age pensions can rest. The attitude of this court is reflected in what we had to say of the causal relation between the disease and the employment in Longobardi v. Sargent & Co., 100 Conn. 383, 392, 124 A. 13, 17:

" The vice of plaintiff's argument is that he ignores these findings of fact, and emphasizes the other facts found that he suffered from progressive heart disease, and also that during the same period he was at work, as equivalent to establishing a causal relation between the work and the disease, that is, speaking generally, because these facts were concomitant they were necessarily correlative, an ever recurring fallacy which lies at the foundation of much erroneous reasoning. As we have just seen, the finding in the case is that there was no causal relation between his malady and his work." Madden's Case, 222 Mass. 487, 495, 111 N.E. 379, 383, L.R.A. 1916D, 1000.

In every case thus far decided by us, where an award has been sustained, or error found in the failure of the commissioner to make an award, the subordinate facts found by the commissioner as corrected have supported the conclusion reached by us, because they presented cases where a causal connection, such as we have described, between the injury and the employment was present. The injury was due to a risk arising out of the employment or the conditions under which it was carried on. Where the subordinate facts did not present this causal connection, we have refused to sustain the award made. Cormican v. McMahon, 102 Conn. 234, 128 A. 709; Louth v. The G. & O. Mfg. Co., 104 Conn. 459, 133 A. 664.

" Personal injury," as used in our Workmen's Compensation Law prior to the amendment in chapter 142 Public Acts of 1919, did not include injuries due to disease unless the disease was the direct result of accidental bodily injury. Miller v. American Steel & Wire Co., 90 Conn. 349, 97 A. 345, L.R.A. 1916E, 510. Any form of disease, no matter what--heart disease, cancer, or tuberculosis--was under this ruling compensable if it was the direct or proximate result of an accidental bodily injury. All the injury flowing in the chain...