McKnight v. Clemons

• Decision Date: 30 June 1959
• Docket Number: No. 4868,4868
• Parties: Felix McKNIGHT, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Guy CLEMONS et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

Page 114

114 So.2d 114

Felix McKNIGHT, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Guy CLEMONS et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 4868.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, First Circuit.

June 30, 1959.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 31, 1959.

L. B. Ponder, Jr., Amite, for appellants.

Palmer & Palmer, Amite, for appellee.

Before LOTTINGER and TATE, Judges.

TATE, Judge.

This is a suit for workmen's compensation benefits. The defendants-employers, operators of a sawmill, appeal from an award for total and permanent disability to the plaintiff-employee, a millwright.

The defendants' chief contention upon appeal is that plaintiff's undoubted disability by reason of a hernia and a heart condition is not compensable, since allegedly it did not result from an accident within the meaning of the compensation act.

The practically uncontradicted evidence shows that while at work on the morning of August 13, 1956, plaintiff attempted to move a heavy piece of machinery. While straining he became dizzy and faint and simultaneously felt a sharp stinging pain in his lower abdomen; and he fell to the ground.

Although when his employer brought him home the plaintiff-employee thought he had just become sick and did not need medical attention, within four days he reported for medical examination because of continuing dizziness, unsteadiness, and nausea. The physician to whom he was brought at once diagnozed the cause of his disability as a heart and vascular condition consisting of 'myocardial disease, probably of arteriosclerotic nature with mitral valvular disease (stenosis) and mild hypertension.' He was put to bed for complete rest and, later in the course of the treatment, advised that he should only attempt mild activity but never to do full time hard labor again.

The preponderance of the medical testimony is in accord that the unusually heavy exertion at work precipitated a disabling manifestation of symptoms of the pre-existing heart and vascular condition. Because such might have occurred anyway in the course of time, the condition being a degenerative process, the able district court (who did allow compensation for a work-caused hernia) felt that any disability by reason of the heart condition was a result of a disease, rather than an accident, and was therefore not compensable. We believe that in so doing, our learned brother overlooked the well-settled jurisprudence summarized by Chief Justice Fournet for the Supreme Court, with many citations, in Hemphill v. Tremont Lumber Co., 209 La. 885, 25 So.2d 625, at page 627:

'* * * the legal requirements are present to constitute an accident and an injury is compensable where excessive heat, heavy lifting or other strenuous efforts, although usual and customary, cause or contribute to a physical breakdown or accelarate its occurrence because of a pre-existing condition.'

See also Cutno v. Neeb Kearney & Co., La., 112 So.2d 628; Talbot v. Trinity Universal Ins. Co., La.App. 1 Cir., 99 So.2d 811, certiorari denied; Roberson v. Michigan Mutual Liability Co., La.App. 2 Cir., 90 So.2d 465, certiorari denied.

At the time of the trial in 1958 plaintiff was still unable to perform hard labor due to dizzy spells and weakness resulting from the heart condition. Every doctor testifying thereasto felt that the claimant should not return to heavy duties because of his heart and circulatory condition. A heart specialist testifying for plaintiff stated without contradiction in the record that if plaintiff attempted to return to work, 'shortness of breath and weakness would actually prevent him (from doing continuous manual labor) if not on the first day on a job of that sort, at least shortly thereafter.' Tr. 19. Considering that the 52-year-old claimant prior to the accident had performed hard manual labor without difficulty and without complaint all his life (the ten years prior thereto for the present defendants-employers), under the authorities above cited plaintiff's disability from his heart and vascular disability is compensable since its disabling manifestation was precipitated by and resulted from the straining accident at work.

As an additional ground for compensability, we may further add that the heart specialist testified that after the first such incident or attack a patient is much more prone to a reoccurrence, and that hard manual labor had caused and would increase damage to the heart. Thus, as a result of injuries...