Vinson v. Einbinder

• Decision Date: 14 June 1962
• Docket Number: No. 16582.,16582.
• Citation: 113 US App. DC 246,307 F.2d 387
• Parties: Madge VINSON, surviving wife, et al., Appellants, v. Charles EINBINDER, Deputy Commissioner, Bureau of Employees' Compensation, et al., Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

113 US App. DC 246, 307 F.2d 387 (1962)

Madge VINSON, surviving wife, et al., Appellants, v. Charles EINBINDER, Deputy Commissioner, Bureau of Employees' Compensation, et al., Appellees.

No. 16582.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued January 22, 1962.

Decided June 14, 1962.

Petition for Rehearing Denied September 12, 1962.

Mr. Martin E. Gerel, Washington, D. C., with whom Messrs. Lee C. Ashcraft and Joseph H. Koonz, Jr., Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellants.

Mr. Herbert P. Miller, Asst. Sol., Dept. of Labor, with whom Messrs. Charles Donahue, Sol., Dept. of Labor, David C. Acheson, U. S. Atty., and Nathan J. Paulson, Asst. U. S. Atty., were on the brief, for appellee Einbinder.

Mr. M. S. Mazzuchi, Washington, D. C., for appellees Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. and McCloskey Enterprises, Inc.

Before EDGERTON, BAZELON and WASHINGTON, Circuit Judges.

Petition for Rehearing En Banc Denied En Banc September 12, 1962.

EDGERTON, Circuit Judge.

This is a workman's compensation case. 44 Stat. 1424, 33 U.S.C.A. § 901; 45 Stat. 600, D.C.Code § 36-501 (1961).

On July 7, 1959, Henry Vinson was "driving and backing" his employer's truck "in various positions", on the construction site of a new House Office building, when he slumped over in the cab of the truck and died instantly of coronary insufficiency and coronary sclerosis. He had been driving and occasionally backing for 1½ to 2½ hours. A crane was mounted on the truck. The weight of the whole was about 68,000 pounds (34 tons). The truck did not have power steering.

Though the work Vinson was doing when he died was, as the Deputy Commissioner found, a normal part of his job, the Deputy Commissioner denied compensation to Vinson's widow and children. He found that Vinson "was not subjected to heavy physical strain" and that death "did not result from injury arising out of and in the course of the employment". There is no substantial support in the record for these findings. The District Court therefore erred in granting summary judgment for the appellees in this suit by the appellants to set aside the order denying compensation.

"Our task is to ascertain whether the Deputy Commissioner's findings are supported by substantial evidence upon the record considered as a whole * * *. The reviewing court will not sustain the administrative findings merely because they are substantiated by some isolated evidence. Our review must also take account of the settled rule that the Act is to be construed with a view to its beneficent purposes. Doubts, including the factual, are to be resolved in favor of the employee or his dependent family." Friend v. Britton, 95 U.S.App.D.C. 139, 141, 220 F.2d 820, 822.

Anyone who distinctly remembers turning and backing an ordinary car, without power steering, when the car was moving slowly, knows it was hard work. Obviously it would have been harder if the car had weighed 34 tons. If there were no evidence in the present record that driving and backing 34 tons of truck and crane, without power steering, on a construction site, was strenuous work, we might perhaps take judicial notice of the fact. But there is ample evidence.

A fellow employee of Vinson testified that moving the steering wheel of the truck was "hard labor * * * very hard. A hard maneuver. * * * I know of many times I reached up and actually helped him pull the wheel around." A heavy "counterweight" was usually over the rear wheels of the truck but was over the front wheels when Vinson died. The operator of the crane on the truck testified that this position of the counterweight made steering hard for the truck driver and that sometimes "it would take two people to turn the wheel. * * * When you make a tight turn you need all the help you can get." A foreman testified that when Vinson died he was "maneuvering and backing in to a very tight and difficult spot." The fellow employee had suggested to Vinson that he "get a lighter job * * * because it was just too much for a man his age and it took a young man with a lot of muscle power to...