Mississippi State University v. Hattaway's Dependents, 44053

• Decision Date: 24 October 1966
• Docket Number: No. 44053,44053
• Citation: 191 So.2d 418
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY and United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. v. DEPENDENTS of Orrin E. HATTAWAY, Deceased.

Page 418

191 So.2d 418

MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY and United States Fidelity &amp Guaranty Co. v. DEPENDENTS of Orrin E. HATTAWAY, Deceased.

No. 44053.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Oct. 24, 1966.

Suggestion of Error Overruled Nov. 14, 1966.

Charles H. McCraine, Jr., Houston, for appellant.

P. L. Douglas, Starkville, for appellees.

PATTERSON, Justice.

This is a workmen's compensation case. It arises from an order of the Circuit Court of Monroe County, Mississippi, which awarded dependency death benefits under the Workmen's Compensation Act to the widow and child of Orrin E. Hattaway deceased. This order reversed that of the attorney-referee and the full commission. We affirm the judgment of the circuit court.

The sole question raised on this appeal is whether the lower court erred in overruling the findings and order of the attorney-referee and the full commission in awarding compensation benefits to the claimants.

On the morning of November 5, 1962, Orrin E. Hattaway fell dead in the office of the Mississippi State University Animal Husbandry Department at Prairie, Mississippi, his place of employment. He had reported to work at approximately seven o'clock feeling well and in apparent good health. At 7:30 a.m. he began welding some iron legs to an Air Force container for the purpose of converting the same into a stock water tank. After welding on this container for approximately five minutes he went to the office of his superior, Fairl Bowlin, the superintendent of the Experiment Station, and stated to him that the paint had made him awfully nauseated and that it was burning his nose. Bowlin testified that Hattaway went outside and vomited and came back into the office for a few minutes and then returned to the shop and started welding again, and 'in three or four minutes he come back to the office and told me again, said, 'I never have had paint to make me sick before' said, 'I've welded all my life and it never made me sick before', and he went outside and vomited and stood around there a little bit in the fresh air and he come back through the office and walked back into the shop and raised up some windows, and then he come back into the office and sat down with his back to the heater and he sat there a few minutes and he tried to get up and he got up and tried to say something to me and I had my back to him at the time and I heard him try to say something to me and I turned, and he fell on the concrete floor and hit his head real hard on the concrete floor above his eye-around his nose-his head was the first thing hit the floor and he got a pretty hard blow on his lead, and I jumped up and grabbed him and me and the negro put him in the truck and brought him to the hospital at that time.' Hattaway was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. The attending physician testified that he did not know the cause of decedent's death.

From these facts, there being no autopsy, the point to be determined by this Court is whether there was a causal connection between decedent's employment and his death.

The following factors are apparent: (1) Hattaway felt good at the time he arrived for work on the morning of his demise; (2) he had no history of previous serious illnesses; (3) the welding on the Air Force container was in the course of decedent's employment; (4) the fumes from this welding, according to the deceased's testimony, caused him to become ill; (5) he died immediately thereafter; and (6) finally, the cause of death is totally unexplained. In 1 Larson, Workmen's Compensation Law § 10.32 at 108, Unexplained Deaths (1964) we find the following statement:

When an employee is found dead under circumstances indicating that death took place within the time and space limits of the employment, in the absence of any evidence of what caused the death, most courts will indulge a presumption or inference that the death arose out of the employment.

Larson cites thereunder L. B. Priester & Son, Inc. v. Dependents of Clarence Edward Bynum, 247 Miss. 664, 157 So.2d 399 (1963); Winters Hardwood Dimension Co. v. Dependents of Harris, 236 Miss. 757, 112 So.2d 227 (1959); and Pearson v. Dixie Electric Power Ass'n, 219 Miss. 884, 70 So.2d 6 (1954). Dunn, Mississippi Workmen's Compensation § 166 (1965 Supp.) under Evidence, Presumptions, Burden of Proof states:

However, it is now well settled in this...