Neely v. City Of Statesville, 385.
| Decision Date | 03 November 1937 |
| Docket Number | No. 385.,385. |
| Citation | 212 N.C. 365,193 S.E. 664 |
| Parties | NEELY et al. v. CITY OF STATESVILLE et al. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Appeal from Superior Court, Iredell County; J. A. Rousseau, Judge.
Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Mrs. Pinkney Tomlin Neely, widow, and dependents of William Lloyd Neely, deceased, claimant, for the death of William Lloyd Neely, employee, opposed by the City of Statesville, employer, and the Travelers Insurance Company, carrier. Judgment reversing an award by the Industrial Commission in favor of claimants, and claimants appeal.
Affirmed.
Proceeding under North Carolina Workmen's Compensation Act to determine liability of defendants to widow of William Lloyd Neely, deceased, employee.
The deceased was chief of the fire department of the City of Statesville. On November 15, 1936, about noon, the fire department was called to the home of G. E. French to extinguish fire which was burning in the roof above the attic and the third floor. On arriving at the place of the fire, deceased assisted by J. R. Benfield, working rapidly, pulled approximately 700 feet of fire hose from a truck. This hose weighed 75 to 80 pounds per length of 50 feet. This was the customary and ordinary method of handling the hose under the circumstances. When the truck could not pull the hose up to the house, the men did it. The deceased rushed into the burning building, went up two flights of stairs, ran up one, and then up into the attic. The fire was burning very rapidly. There he assisted in pulling a section of hose filled with water and under pressure through a window. He remained there for some 10 or 15 minutes. During that time he was assisting and directing others in fighting the fire. The smoke was very dense and the heat intense, and almost unbearable. Frequently the men had to seek fresh air. The roof of that particular part of the burning building fell in. Then the deceased came out of the attic to a landing at head of stairway. A short time thereafter he collapsed and fell on the stairway, and died within a few minutes.
The deceased was and had been for more than two years a sufferer from a chronic cardiac condition. There was considerable excitement incident to the fire. The medical testimony was to the effect that the excitement, the unloading of the hose in a hurried manner, running up the steps, and fighting the fire aggravated the condition with which deceased was suffering and accelerated his death; that the proximate cause of his death was excitement, exhaustion, and heart failure.
The commissioner who heard the case awarded compensation. On appeal to full commission...
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...Board of Education, 222 N.C. 358, 23 S.E.2d 292; McGill v. Town of Lumberton, 215 N.C. 752, 3 S.E.2d 324. In Neely v. City of Statesville, 212 N.C. 365, 193 S.E. 664, 665, a fireman of the defendant fighting a fire came out of the attic of a burning building to a landing at the head of a st......
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... ... S.E.2d 97 ... We find ... nothing in Neely v. City of Statesville, 212 N.C ... 365, 193 S.E. 664; Slade v. Willis ... ...
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Gabriel v. Town of Newton
...hot, but not excessively so. The case is free from 'injury by accident,' as that phrase is used in the Workmen's Compensation Act. ' In the Neely case [212 N.C. 365, 193 S.E. 665], where the who was chief of the fire department, died from a heart attack brought on by fighting a fire, it app......
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Gabriel v. Town Of Newton
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