Meldrum v. Southard Feed & Mill Co.

• Decision Date: 11 June 1934
• Docket Number: No. 18130.,18130.
• Citation: 74 S.W.2d 75
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals
• Parties: ANNA BELLE MELDRUM, RESPONDENT, v. SOUTHARD FEED & MILL CO., EMPLOYER, AETNA LIFE INSURANCE CO., APPELLANT.

74 S.W.2d 75

ANNA BELLE MELDRUM, RESPONDENT, v. SOUTHARD FEED & MILL CO., EMPLOYER, AETNA LIFE INSURANCE CO., APPELLANT.

No. 18130.

Kansas City Court of Appeals. Missouri.

June 11, 1934.

Appeal from Circuit Court of Jackson County. — Hon. Ben Terte, Judge.

REVERSED.

Julius C. Shapiro and William Goodman for respondent.

Madden, Freeman & Madden for appellant.

BLAND, J.

This is an appeal from the judgment of the circuit court affirming an award of the Workmen's Compensation Commission in favor of the widow of one Charles B. Meldrum, who, it is claimed, died of an accidental injury received by him in the course of his employment with the defendant, Southard Feed & Mill Company.

It is insisted by the appellants that there is not sufficient competent evidence in the record to sustain the finding of the commission that the deceased suffered personal injury or death by accident within the meaning of the Compensation Act.

The claim filed before the commission alleges that the death of deceased was caused by his "being unusually and unduly exposed to extreme cold weather, and/or by induced overexertion in loading and carrying heavy sacks of feed from warehouse chute to freight car, causing his sudden and unexpected collapse, and injuries to the physical and internal structure of his body, and resulting in pneumonia and other complications, and death." The commission found that "employee received an accident while transferring these sacks from the chute to place them in the freight car, and... the accident arose out of and in the course of his employment" and that the accident was the cause of his death.

The facts show that deceased was employed by the Southard Feed & Mill Company for approximately five years. For the last two years of his employment his work consisted mainly of that of a molasses mixer, and his duties were discharged on the second floor of the mill located in Kansas City. It was also a part of his regular duties to assist one Slusser in loading freight cars at the mill dock on the outside of the building when Slusser needed help. Deceased was called on to assist Slusser two or three times a week.

During the forenoon of February 9, 1933, deceased was directed to paper a forty-foot box car stationed at the dock preparatory to its loading, which he did. In the afternoon Slusser started to load the car with meal sacks weighing about 100 pounds each. He had finished one tier of forty sacks stacked across the north end of the car and was starting on the second tier when the foreman directed deceased to assist Slusser. The sacks were conveyed into the car from the packing floor above by means of an endless conveyor belt which delivered the sacks into a chute leading into the car. From the chute they were carried by the men and stacked in tiers within the car. The sacks came into the car at the rate of ten or twelve per minute, requiring each employee to handle five or six per minute. It was about sixteen feet from the chute to the place where the sacks were deposited. Slusser and deceased were the only persons present. They had been loading sacks for not exceeding twenty to thirty minutes and deceased had stacked twelve or fifteen sacks, when the latter, after depositing a sack in the car, started back to the chute apparently to obtain another sack. He took about two steps when he grabbed his chest with his hands and exclaimed, "Oh, My God," and was gasping for breath. Prior to his having this "spell" he had not said "a word" to Slusser. Deceased staggered around the car, "kept going down there," and finally Slusser said to him, "Charlie, get out in the air." Deceased then staggered out to the dock, without assistance, Slusser being busy with keeping the sacks from falling from the chute on to the floor and breaking. Deceased was shortly afterwards found on the dock by his foreman in a "hunkered down" position holding his chest and breathing hard. The foreman then assisted him into the building where he stayed a short time. He was then taken home where he died two days later.

The freight car in question stood upon a north and south track adjoining the dock with the west door of the car closed and the east door, or the one next to the mill, open. The sacks came into the car through the east door. The car was unprotected from the elements, being situated on open ground on all sides and the temperature was below zero. It was "awfully cold" and "some of it (the wind) came in."

Slusser was six feet two inches in height and weighed 215 pounds. The sacks coming from the chute "slid right down" on Slusser's shoulder. Deceased was five feet seven inches tall and weighed 142 pounds. While the loading of this car was not a "hurry-up job" it was necessary for the workmen to walk "awfully fast" in doing the work.

Prior to the day deceased collapsed he appeared in good health and performed his work in a satisfactory manner. He was apparently a normal individual "enjoying life." He never had any ailment or sickness except a cold or influenza several years before. On his way home deceased complained of pains in his chest and numbness in his legs. Claimant testified that in the afternoon when she returned home she found deceased sitting in a chair by the stove; that he was pale, complained of pains in the upper part and center of his chest and in his lungs and was having difficulty in breathing; that this continued until he died; that when he left for his work on the morning of February 9th, he was apparently in good health; that she called Dr. Callaghan, the family physician, the evening of that day.

The facts further show that Dr. Callaghan signed the death certificate, in which he gave as the principal cause of death "Mitral Insufficiency" dating from 1932, with acute endocarditis and pleurisy, as contributing causes. The certificate specified "exposure" as the only connection between the death of the deceased and the employment. There was no post-mortem.

Dr. Callaghan testified before the commission that deceased had suffered from mitral insufficiency (a disease of the mitral valve of the heart) from the year preceding his death; that "the heart was enlarged or thickened;" that he examined deceased the day the latter was brought home from his work and found him suffering from pleurisy, pericarditis and endocarditis; that he examined his heart and lungs with a stethoscope and found friction rales or rubbing sounds in both; that these rales indicated inflammation of the serous membrane covering the heart and lungs; that the heart was very labored and there was a slight murmur detectable; that pericarditis is an inflammation of the covering of the heart and pleurisy an inflammation of the covering of the lungs; that the inflammation extended into the heart producing endocarditis; that deceased's condition was due to overexertion and exposure to the elements — the weather; that when he examined deceased he found his complexion somewhat pallid; that his "breathing was more of a shallow breathing, slightly accelerated ... and ... it was painful — frequent;" that when he examined deceased's chest he found no bruises; that pleurisy could be caused by a blow on the chest but he found no evidence of any such blow, that is bruises.

He further testified that mitral insufficiency generally means dilatation of the heart; that "I didn't say his heart was dilated;" that mitral insufficiency may also mean a breaking down of the resistance of the heart; that his opinion was that the death was caused by exhaustion or breaking down of the mitral resources; that the breaking down of the heart's resistance is not particularly a slow process; that the breaking down in this case was caused by pleurisy and pericarditis; that the heart was already weak from mitral insufficiency; that pericarditis is always accompanied by endocarditis and that endocarditis may be caused by inflammation of the lungs in the region of the heart; that pleurisy is sometimes very painful and comes on suddenly, the pain being very acute; that it effects the breathing but does not cause one to breath heavily and coarsely but "more short" or panting; that the patient does not gasp for breath; that it is what you might say a "sighing breathing" and increases; that inflammation of the heart causes pain; that mitral insufficiency is often caused by over exertion; that it is caused by unusual labor and exposure to the elements; that deceased's death was caused, "undoubtedly, from the exertion principally, and from the exposure, which brought on the pleurisy, and caused the breakdown of the heart... .

"The man was working very hard, undoubtedly. There is no other known cause for the heart being in that condition, except from overexertion, which is the same as often spoken of, as the athlete's condition, as I said a moment ago. Hence, his extreme, you might say, labor, not only put the heart in the condition it was in — not that day, necessarily, but probably over several weeks' time — that put the heart in this so-called `athletic condition,' that brought on the breakdown, when the pleurisy came, and the pericarditis.

"Q. That was due to the unusual exposure, at the time? A. And the unusual exertion." ...

"You know, the heart was the heart of a man that had done a great deal of heavy, extremely heavy work. The — I might say that was a condition, and the pleurisy and pericarditis that set up, you might say, extended on in to the heart. It is like a match would set off a powderhouse, caused the explosion that brought about. The man would be living today, if it hadn't been for that day's work, no doubt."

Dr. Callaghan further testified that in his opinion deceased would not have contracted pleurisy if he had not been engaged in performing physical labor at the time of the exposure. "In the first place, this condition, I believe, was the result of that extreme labor, that the man had been performing, labor that probably should have been divided up more,...