Reeves v. John A. Dady Corp.

• Decision Date: 26 January 1921
• Citation: 113 A. 162,95 Conn. 627
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: REEVES v. JOHN A. DADY CORPORATION.

113 A. 162

95 Conn. 627

REEVES v. JOHN A. DADY CORPORATION.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

January 26, 1921

Appeal from Superior Court, Windham County; John E. Keeler, Judge.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Law by Mary Reeves against John A. Dady Corporation to recover compensation for the death of plaintiff's husband. Decision of the Compensation Commission, refusing an award of compensation on the ground that the injury did not arise out of the employment, was affirmed by the superior court, and plaintiff appeals. No error.

The claimant's husband was employed as overseer of the winding room on the second story of the respondent's silk mill in Putnam, and was killed by falling through an open doorway to the ground below. The accident happened during working hours. The doorway was protected by a three-inch bar about three feet from the floor. The decedent was in good health; the room was large, well lighted, free from dust or smoke, and at the time of the accident the temperature was normal. Shortly before the accident the superintendent of the mill was describing to the decedent the details of a surgical operation, whereupon the decedent said, " That makes me faint," and after declining assistance walked to the doorway to get some air. While standing there his hands were seen to slip from the bar, his knees to give way and he collapsed and fell through the opening between the bar and the floor. The commissioner found that the cause of the decedent's falling from the doorway was a sudden faintness, due to the recital of the details of a surgical operation, and that the faintness did not arise out of anything connected with his employment. On these findings which are not disputed, the commissioner held that the injury did not arise out of and in the course of the decedent's employment, and dismissed the claim. The superior court on appeal confirmed the award of the commissioner and rendered judgment for the respondents.

Wheeler C.J. and Curtis, J., dissenting.

John F. Carpenter, of Putnam, for appellant.

William B. Ely, of New Haven, for appellee.

BEACH, J.

The only difficulty in the case arises from the fact that the decedent fell through a doorway to which his employment permitted him to go, although it did not require him to be there at that time. If there were no direct evidence of the cause of his injury and death, it might be inferred that he went there for some purpose connected with his employment. Saunders v. New England Collapsible Tube Co., 95 Conn. 40, 110 A. 538. On this record, however, that inference is rebutted by the uncontested finding that he went to the doorway for a purpose not connected with his employment, and that he fell through it because he fainted away while standing there. It is also found that his faintness was not due to any conditions connected with his employment and not due to any disability which he brought to his employment. It is not necessary for the claimant to prove that the employment, or some condition connected with it, was the proximate cause of the injury. Fiarenzo v. Richards & Co., 93 Conn. 589, 107 A. 563. But there must be some causal connection between the employment and the injury. ' Larke v. Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 90 Conn. 309, 97 A. 320, L.R.A. 1916E, 584. As Chief Justice Rugg has said, the causative danger must appear to have had its origin in a risk connected with the employment and to have flowed from that as a rational consequence. McNicol's Case, 215 Mass. 497, 102 N.E. 697, L.R.A. 1916A, 306.

We are unable to find any operative causal connection between the employment and the injury in this case. While the open doorway protected by a bar was in some degree potentially dangerous, there is no finding that it was actually dangerous to a person in good health who might stand at or near it. The real operative and causative danger in this case did not arise until the decedent stood at the doorway in a fainting condition; and the finding is explicit that there was no causal relation between his employment and his being at the doorway while in that condition. In this respect the case at bar differs sharply from Wicks v. Dowell Co., [1902] L. R. 2 K. B. 225, where the decedent was an epileptic and his employment compelled him to stand on the edge of the opening into which a stroke of epilepsy precipitated him. All the other cases relied upon by the claimant are consistent with the rule that the causative danger must have its origin in a risk connected with the employment and flow from it as a rational consequence. That being so, and the employee being in the course of his employment, the fact that he voluntarily moved toward the spot where the accident occurred is immaterial. Robinson v. State, 93 Conn. 49, 104 A. 491; DeLuca v. Park Commissioners, 94 Conn. 7, 107 A. 611; Fiarenzo v. Richards & Co., 93 Conn. 589, 107 A. 563; Procaccino v. Horton & Sons, 95 Conn. 408, 111 A. 594. In this case the decedent did not fall out of the doorway through carelessness, or because of any disability which he brought to his employment, but because of a sudden faintness, due to a definitely ascertained cause, which had no connection with his employment. The finding leaves no room for inference. His hands were seen to slip from the bar, his knees to give way, and his body collapsed and fell out between the bar and the floor.

It is said that, because the decedent was in the course of his employment when the injury occurred, and because the open doorway was a continuing risk of the employment, therefore the injury in question arose out of the employment, and the claimant is entitled to compensation. Ordinarily that would be true, but it is not necessarily true. Ordinarily the fact that the employee is in the course of his employment is the very thing which subjects him to the risks of his employment; and therefore a causal relation between the injury and the employment will generally exist wherever an employee in the course of his employment is injured by a risk incident to his employment.

But the term " in the course of his employment" is sufficiently elastic, especially when the employment is in a supervisory capacity, to permit the employee to depart temporarily from the performance of his contract of employment without departing from the course of his employment; and if because of such a temporary departure from the performance of his duties the employee is injured by a risk incidental to his employment, while he is doing something utterly irrelevant to the employment, he cannot recover. Mann v. Glastonbury Knitting Co., 90 Conn. 116, 96 A. 368, L.R.A. 1916D, 86, is a good illustration of this. In that case the claimant, a foreman, undertook to put a bottle of milk into a hot-air pipe and his hand came in contact with a revolving fan. He was in the course of his employment and the injury was caused by a hazard incidental to his employment; but we held that he could not recover, because the injury was directly caused by a temporary departure on his part from his employment, and therefore did not arise out of the employment.

The general proposition involved was stated in Larke v. Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 90 Conn. 303, 309, 97 A. 320, 322 (L. R. A. 1916E, 584), as follows:

" An injury which occurs in the course of the employment will ordinarily arise out of the employment, but not necessarily so; for the injury might occur out of an act or omission for the exclusive benefit of the employee, or of another than the master, while the employee is engaged in the course of his employment."

In this case the acts and omissions leading to the injury, beginning with the conversation between the decedent and the superintendent, and continuing without any break in the chain of causation to the fall through the open doorway, were wholly irrelevant to the decedent's employment, and the injury did not arise out of the employment, but out of a temporary departure therefrom.

There is no error.

CASE and BURPEE, JJ., concurred.

WHEELER C.J. (dissenting).

I am unable to agree with the opinion of the majority. The commissioner held that the injury arose in the course of the employment, but did not arise out of the employment, and denied compensation. The claimant appealed, and the trial court dismissed the appeal. The claimant appeals from this judgment, for error of the trial court in deciding that the injury did not arise out of and in the course of the employment, and from the judgment dismissing claimant's appeal.

Claimant is mistaken in assigning as an error of the trial court its holding that the injury did not arise in the course of the employment. Both the trial court and the commissioner held that the injury did arise in the course of the employment, but did not arise out of the employment. The sole question in the case is: Did the injury arise out of the employment? The room from which the accident happened was a large room, occupying the entire second floor of the Dady Corporation silk mill. The decedent fell from an open doorway, protected not otherwise than by a 3-inch bar across the doorway some 3 feet from the floor. The place in front of the doorway was one where the employees in this room and the decedent, overseer of this room, had the right to be in the course of their employment. A fall from this doorway to the hard surface walk 15 feet below was almost certain to be dangerous to the life or body of whoever should so fall. If any employee or the overseer were close to and looking out of this doorway, and became faint, or if he unexpectedly tripped while near the doorway, he was liable to fall under or over this narrow bar. It was an existing condition of the employment, and a risk incident to the employment and the...