Permanent Const. Co. v. Indus. Comm'n

• Decision Date: 15 September 1942
• Docket Number: Nos. 26329,26330.,s. 26329
• Citation: Permanent Const. Co. v. Indus. Comm'n, 380 Ill. 47, 43 N.E.2d 557 (Ill. 1942)
• Parties: PERMANENT CONST. CO. v. INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION et al. (two cases).
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

380 Ill. 47

43 N.E.2d 557

PERMANENT CONST. CO.

v.INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION et al.(two cases).

Nos. 26329, 26330.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 11, 1942.

As Modified on Denial of Rehearing Sept. 15, 1942.

Error to Circuit Court, Kankakee County; Hon. Luther Bratton, Judge.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Lorraine M. Brown, widow of Harold Glenn Brown, on her own behalf and on behalf of her minor child, for the death of Harold Glenn Brown, employee, opposed by Permanent Construction Company, employer, consolidated with a proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Edward A. St. Peter, employee, to recover compensation, opposed by the Permanent Construction Company, employer.To review judgments confirming decisions of Industrial Commission which awarded compensation in each case, the Permanent Construction Company, employer, brings error.

WILSON and GUNN, JJ., dissenting.Peregrine & Bruegger, of Chicago, for plaintiff in error.

Frank W. Curran, Donald Gray, and Samuel H. Shapiro, all of Kankakee, for defendant in errorLorraine M. Brown et al.

Orr, Vail, Lewis & Orr, Greenberg & Sachs and Sharl B. Bass, all of Chicago (Loren E. Lewis, Daniel D. Carmell, and Jack L. Sachs, all of Chicago, of counsel), for defendant in errorEdward A. St. Peter.

STONE, Justice.

These are cases consolidated here, for the purpose of opinion, and brought to review the judgments of the circuit court of Kankakee county confirming the decisions of the Industrial Commission which awarded compensation in each case.Defendant in error, Lorraine M. Brown, widow of Harold Glenn Brown, on her own behalf and on behalf of her minor child, and defendant in error Edward A. St. Peter, in his own behalf, filed applications for awards.The sole question involved in each case is whether typhoid fever, contracted by Brown and St. Peter, employees of plaintiff in error, and from which Brown died, arose out of their employment, within the meaning of the Workmen's Compensation act.

The facts were stipulated in the Brown case and evidence was heard in the St. Peter case.The facts in each case are substantially the same except as above noted.Brown and St. Peter were employed by plaintiff in error construction company in the construction of buildings, under a contract plaintiff in error had with the State of Illinois, on the grounds of the Manteno State Hospital.The hospital grounds consist of about 1,000 acres and the buildings thereon house some 5,600 inmates, 800 employees and attaches, and 20 doctors.Plaintiff in error and other contractors employed some 400 to 450 workers who worked on the premises eight hours a day for five days a week.Visitors, strangers, taxi drivers and tradesmen entered the grounds and some of the buildings every day of the week.The only drinking water available on the grounds was from a waterworks system maintained by the State of Illinois for use by those living upon and who came upon the grounds of the institution.As a result of contamination in the general water supply, a typhoid epidemic occurred at the institution.About 391 of the inmates, 60 employees and attaches of the institution, certain employees of the plaintiff in error, and five known visitors to the institution contracted typhoid fever.Brown and St. Peter were among the employees of plaintiff in error and they contracted the disease from drinking the water.The water Brown and St. Peter drank was taken from the hydrants and conveyed to the employees of plaintiff in error in buckets, by a water boy.There is no contention that the water buckets or the vessels from which the employees drank contributed to the contamination of the water.

Typhoid fever is accidental if the disease is contracted by accidental means.Rissman & Son v. Industrial Comm., 323 Ill. 459, 154 N.E. 203;Christ v. Pacific Mutual Life Ins. Co., 312 Ill. 525, 144 N.E. 161, 35 A.L.R. 730.In the Christ case it was held that the manner in which the disease is contracted is material in determining whether the disease was contracted as the result of an accident.In that casethis court cited with approval two cases decided by courts of other jurisdictions, holding that typhoid fever was a bodily injury accidentally received or suffered by the parties therein named.A recovery was had in one of the cases under an insurance policy insuring against accidental injury.Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Portland Gas & Coke Co., 9 Cir., 229 F. 552, L.R.A.1916D, 1027.In the second case compensation was awarded an employee, the court holding that under the facts of that case an accidental injury under the Workmen's Compensation act had occurred.Vennen v. New Dells Lumber Co., 161 Wis. 370, 154 N.W. 640, L.R.A.1916A, 273, Ann.Cas.1918B, 293.In Frankamp v. Fordney Hotel, 222 Mich. 525, 193 N.W. 204, andAmes v. Lake Independence Lumber Co., 226 Mich. 83, 197 N.W. 499, the Supreme Court of Michigan held that the contracting of typhoid fever under the conditions there shown was the result of accident.Hood & Sons v. Maryland Casualty Co., 206 Mass. 223, 92 N.E. 329, 330, 30 L.R.A.,N.S., 1192, 138 Am.St.Rep. 379, was a suit upon an employer's liability policy to recover damages which the employer had been compelled to pay to a hostler employed in its stables who had the care of horses which were afterward found to have been suffering from glanders and were killed.Barry, the employee, was directed to assist in cleaning up the stalls.He was subsequently attacked by the disease and brought an action against the employer for negligently putting him to work on the horses and exposing him to the disease.He recovered a judgment against the employer who brought suit against the insurance company and recovered the amount which it was compelled to pay.It was held that the disease from which the employee suffered was due to an accident.The court said: ‘The intention is, as has been said, to afford full protection and indemnity to the assured.Any accident that causes bodily injury in any way is included.Bodily injury is more commonly associated perhaps with physical force of some sort, but in the absence of anything in the policy limiting it to that we do not see how or why it can or should be so restricted.A liability growing out of an accident which results in infecting the workman with a loathsome and dangerous disease and thereby causes him great and perhaps lasting physical injury would seem to be as much within the spirit and intent of the contract as if the injury had been caused by a blow or some other equally obvious manifestation of force.’

Under the stipulation in the Brown case and the evidence in the St. Peter case before us, the arbitrator and the commission found that the employees, by drinking the water containing typhoid bacilli, furnished them by plaintiff in error, suffered accidental injuries in the course of their employment.That finding is not contested.The question here is, Did the accidental injury to each employee arise out of the employment?Determination of the question whether an injury arises out of the employment is one which is frequently attended with much difficulty-not so much in the determination of the rule as in its appplication to the facts under consideration.This court has in a number of cases announced the rule to be that an injury arises out of the employment when there is apparent to the rational mind, upon consideration of all the circumstances, a causal connection between the conditions under which the work is required to be performed and the resulting injury.Under this test, if the injury can be seen to have followed as a natural incident to the work and as a result of the exposure occasioned by the nature of the employment, then it arises out of the employment.The rule excludes an injury which cannot be fairly traced to the employment as a contributing proximate cause.A hazard to which the workman would have been equally exposed apart from the employment is not compensable.The causative danger must be peculiar to the work and not common to the neighborhood.It must be incidental to the character of the business and not independent of the relation of master and servant.It need not have been foreseen or expected, but after the event it must appear to have had its origin in a risk connected with the employment and to have flowed from that source as a rational consequence.Abell Chevrolet Co. v. Industrial Comm., 370 Ill. 460, 19 N.E.2d 361;Borgeson v. Industrial Comm., 368 Ill. 188, 13 N.E.2d 164;Great American Indemnity Co. v. Industrial Comm., 367 Ill. 241, 11 N.E.2d 9;Consumers' Co. v. Industrial Comm., 324 Ill. 152, 154 N.E. 423, 53 A.L.R. 1079;Gooch v. Industrial Comm., 322 Ill. 586, 153 N.E. 624;Alzina Construction Co. v. Industrial Comm., 309 Ill. 395, 141 N.E. 191;Central Illinois Public Service Co. v. Industrial Comm., 291 Ill. 256, 126 N.E. 144, 13 A.L.R. 967.Though the risk be one common to the general public, if the employee was, by reason of his employment,...