Rittler v. Indus. Comm'n

• Decision Date: 23 February 1933
• Docket Number: No. 21678.,21678.
• Citation: 184 N.E. 654,351 Ill. 338
• Parties: RITTLER v. INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

351 Ill. 338

184 N.E. 654

RITTLER

v.INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION et al.

No. 21678.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Feb. 23, 1933.

Error to Circuit Court, Adams County; Fred G. Wolfe, Judge.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Walter O. Rittler, administrator, for the injury and death of Charles L. Spalding, opposed by the Illinois Power & Light Corporation, employer. To review a judgment of the circuit court setting aside an order of the Industrial Commission which set aside the arbitrator's awards granting compensation, employer brings error.

Reversed and remanded, with directions.John E. Wall, of Quincy, and E. Bentley Hamilton, of Peoria, for plaintiff in error.

Lancaster & Nichols, of Quincy, for defendant in error.

DUNN, Justice.

This writ of error is prosecuted to review the judgment of the circuit court of Adams county in the matter of an application for compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act (Smith-Hurd Rev. St. 1927, c. 48, § 138 et seq.) for the death of Charles L. Spalding, who, while in the employ of the plaintiff in error, the Illinois Power & Light Corporation, on January 31, 1925, received an injury. The defendant in error, Walter O. Rittler, was appointed his conservator on October 12, 1927, and on November 12, 1927, filed an application with the Industrial Commission for compensation for the injury. The application was heard by an arbitrator on February 15, 1928. Spalding died on February 26, and on March 19, 1928, the arbitrator made an award of compensation for total disability. A petition for review was filed, and on February 9, 1929, the conservator, as administrator ex officio, filed an application for compensation on account of Spalding's death. The arbitrator made an award on this petition, a petition for review was filed, and the two petitions for reviewwere consolidated by agreement and were heard together by the Industrial Commission, which set aside the awards and entered an order finding that Spalding's death was not caused by the injury and that he had not sustained any disability in his lifetime for which he was entitled to compensation. Upon a writ of certiorari, the circuit court set aside the order of the commission and entered an award in favor of Spalding's administrator for the benefit of the estate of Cecelia Spalding, who had died during the pendency of the proceedings. Upon the petition of the employer, it was awarded a writ of error to bring the record before us.

Spalding was employed by the plaintiff in error as a blacksmith in general car repairing. He was about 58 years old. No one saw the accident which befell him on January 31, 1925. He was working by himself at the time, hanging or tightening bearings on the axle of a street car, using a wrench. He was in a pit doing this work, standing with his feet on the bottom of the pit while the axle on which he was working was over the pit and above hom. The bottom of the pit was of rough concrete and the siders of brick. Though nobody saw it, he must have fallen, for he was found in the pit, in a somewhat dazed condidtion, sitting on some gear wheels, and the bruises on his back and head must have been caused by a fall which was hard enough to cause the dazed condition in which he was. He climbed out of the pit up the steps for that purpose, took off his overalls, and was taken to Dr. Miller for examination and then home. He was helped out of the car and walked without help to the doctor's office. The doctor gave him a casual examination, finding a bruised spot on his back a little to the right of the spine, just below the floating rib, between it and the hip. He did not discover the injury to the head. Spalding went home in the car and was helped into the house, where his family took care of his injuries. No physician was called. His back where it was injured turned blue and green, and his head, where hurt, was bandaged. About a week or ten days later he called on Dr. Miller again, but the doctor did not learn of the injury to his head. He returned to work within a week and worked throughout February, or nearly so. He quit then of his own accord because he could not get his mind on his work. He had been in that employment two and a half or three years, and had been a competent worker, losing no time from sickness or otherwise. Straightening out fenders had been part of his work, and nearly two years after the accident, when the regular blacksmith of the plaintiff in error was sick, Spalding took his place until he returned to work, being the three days of January 15, 16, and 17, 1927.

After Spalding was injured, his mind was confused. His mental confusion and lack of physical co-ordination were manifested by various things. He was nervous and agitated. In talking he would begin a subject and wander off to something else before he finished. At times he wandered away from home. He quit chewing tobacco because he could not spit properly and had difficulty in feeding himself. Before the injury he was enough of a mechanic to repair his automobile, take the engine apart and put it together again. After the accident he took it apart and could not put it together again and lost some of its parts. Before the accident he could put a roof on skillfully. Afterwards he was employed to put on a roof but made a complete failure, fixing the flashing upside down. He laid the roof so as to take water instead of shedding it. Harry H. Thale employed him to treat honeycomb to get rid of the bee disease ‘foul brood.’ He could not do that work because he would take a comb in his hand and then forget whether he had treated it or not. If a single comb were untreated, it would contaminate a whole hive. E. W. Rittler employed him to put a door in a partition wall, but he was unable to do it, though he had done the same thing for Rittler before the accident. He could not do the work and was crying about it and about his condition. After the accident he cried frequently and without cause. He grew progressively worse from the time of the injury until his death. Strong, capable, and healthy before he was hurt, he was unable to do effective work afterwards.

The judgment of the court under review rests upon the court's determination, upon the evidence, of the question of fact whether the condition of Spalding after his injury, and his subsequent death, were caused by his fall and injury. They followed the injury, but the mere existence of a changed condition after a certain event is not evidence that the event was the cause of the condition unless there is something in the nature and relation of the event and the condition showing that the one was the cause of the other. Courts will take judicial notice that a violent blow on the head may produce unconsciousness of longer or shorter duration and even result in death. A fractured skull may result in immediate death, or death after a longer or shorter time, or in recovery. These are physical effects. What the effect of a particular blow has been on the physical or mental powers of the subject of it is a question of fact to be determined by evidence in the particular case.

We have stated the material facts in the case except the evidence of the physicians and surgeons who testified as experts. No critical examination was made of the part of Spalding's head which struck the floor or the gear wheels, no X-rays were taken of his skull, and there was no autopsy or other examination after his death. Several physicians testified as experts. They were Drs. Beirne and Caddick, who were called by the defendant in error, and Drs. Blickhan, Irwin, Miller, Montgomery, and Norbury, called by the plaintiff in error.

Dr. Beirne, a physician and surgeon of twenty-six years' practice, testified, in answer to a hypothetical question embodying the facts as shown by the evidence, that in his opinion the injury was a contributing factor in the death of the person described in the question. He answered on cross examination that he did not assume that, if a man sustains an accidental injury resulting in a bump on his head and bruise on his back, it would logically follow that he would be unable to pursue his work as a carpenter or as a blacksmith or that he would be insane three years after the injury and then die as a result of the first injury. It was not necessarily probable, but it was possible, and was possible in this instance, that, unless the injury involved an injury to the brain tissue or the spinal cord, the result would not have followed; that, not having the aid of an X-ray picture, the doctor would determine from the symptoms which followed whether there had been an injury to the spinal cord or brain. In this case there was no X-ray picture, and the doctor's opinion was based upon the facts stated in the hypothetical question.

The same hypothetical question was answered by Dr. Caddick, who was present at the hearing and heard the testimony. He gave his opinion that the injury to Spalding had a bearing upon his death. In his cross-examination he stated: ‘The particular thing in the hypothetical question that impresses me most is that Spalding was able to go around and do his work before the injury and not afterwards, and I consider that fact of greatest importance in the formation of my opinion. I also attribute very much importance to the bump and the bruises on the back. The bump on the head is quite significant, though the size of the bump is not what impressed me.’ The doctor testified that hardening of the arteries or something else might have been a contributing factor; ‘that it would not be a natural inference that a natural disease caused the condition following the accident, in view of the fact that the man was well to all appearances before the accident, was able to do his work well, and after the injury those conditions existed;’ that a serious result might follow an injury to the head though no fracture resulted; that a laceration of the brain might follow, the...