Prawatchke v. Sheffield Farms Co. Inc.

• Citation: 134 N.J.L. 92,46 A.2d 68
• Decision Date: 04 March 1946
• Docket Number: No. 225.,225.
• Parties: PRAWATCHKE v. SHEFFIELD FARMS CO., Inc.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

134 N.J.L. 92

46 A.2d 68

PRAWATCHKE

v.SHEFFIELD FARMS CO., Inc.

No. 225.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

March 4, 1946.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Marie Prawatchke, claimant, opposed by Sheffield Farms Company, Inc., employer, for recovery of compensation for the death of the claimant's husband. To review a judgment of the Court of Common Pleas affirming a judgment of the Workmen's Compensation Bureau in favor of the claimant, the employer brings certiorari.

Writ dismissed.

January term, 1946, before BROGAN, C. J., and PARKER and OLIPHANT, JJ.

George F. Lahey, Jr., of Newark, for prosecutor.

Perry E. Belfatto, of Newark, for defendant.

OLIPHANT, Justice.

This is a workman's compensation case.

Respondent's decedent was employed as a milk route salesman for the prosecutor. His duties were to deliver milk, collect empty bottles and make collections. On the day of his death he had served approximately 105 customers, a total of about 250 quarts of milk and moved around about 21 cases of milk, each weighing 70 pounds. In serving some customers it was necessary for him to climb two or three flights of stairs. On September 11, 1944, about 1:00 P.M. he placed six bottles of milk on a dumbwaiter, which he had previously pulled down from a higher floor. This dumbwaiter was used to serve customers in the apartment building where decedent met his death. A Mrs. Campbell, one of prosecutor's customers, talked to deceased down the dumbwaiter shaft. She saw him pulling the dumbwaiter down and he put her milk order on it. Mrs. Campbell says she pulled the dumbwaiter up. Shortly thereafter the apartment house superintendent found deceased in a position half in and half out of the dumbwaiter shaft. This dumbwaiter worked ‘very hard,’ it ‘was heavier to pull’ than the others and there had been complaints about it but the superintendent was unable to fix it.

Decedent died of a coronary thrombosis. He had been suffering of a hardening of the coronary arteries of the heart for some months previous to his death and had been advised against continuing his occupation.

There was a judgment in favor of the respondent in the Workmen's Compensation Bureau which was affirmed on appeal to the Bergen County Court of Common Pleas. Such findings should not be lightly disturbed. Hentz v. Janssen Dairy Corp., 122 N.J.L. 494, 6 A.2d 409.

The issue involved here is whether respondent's deceased husband died as the result of an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment with prosecutor.

It is contended by prosecutor that as no autopsy was performed on the deceased, the medical testimony as to the cause of death, coronary thrombosis, was a mere guess. We do not so find. The cause of death may be determined with reasonable certainty by a physician who had had the deceased under treatment,...