Williams v. Planters Realty Co.

• Decision Date: 07 April 1942
• Docket Number: No. 25855.,25855.
• Citation: 160 S.W.2d 480
• Parties: WILLIAMS v. PLANTERS REALTY CO. et al.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

160 S.W.2d 480

WILLIAMS v. PLANTERS REALTY CO. et al.

No. 25855.

St. Louis Court of Appeals. Missouri.

April 7, 1942.

Rehearing Denied April 21, 1942.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court; William S. Connor, Judge.

"Not to be reported in State Reports."

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Emma Williams, dependent widow of Jess Williams, deceased employee, opposed by Planters Realty Company, employer, and the United States Fidelity & Guaranty Company, insurer, to recover compensation for the death of Jess Williams, deceased. The Commission denied compensation on ground that the death of Jess Williams, deceased, was due to an intentional self-inflicted injury, and Emma Williams appealed to the circuit court. From a judgment of the circuit court affirming the award, Emma Williams appeals.

Judgment affirmed.

K. A. Osborn, of St. Louis, and Louis L. Hicks, of Clayton, for appellant.

W. A. Dorsey, Carter & Small and Davis Biggs, Jr., all of St. Louis, for respondent.

BENNICK, Commissioner.

This is a proceeding by Emma Williams, the dependent widow of one Jess Williams, to recover compensation for the latter's death, which occurred on October 31, 1938, while he was in the employ of Planters Realty Company as a night watchman in the Cotton Belt Building located at the southwest corner of Pine and Fourth Streets, in the City of St. Louis.

The commission denied compensation upon the ground that Williams' death was due to an intentional self-inflicted injury, which fact, when found to have existed in a given case, precludes any right to compensation under the express provision of Section 3691, R.S.Mo.1939, Mo.St.Ann. § 3301, p. 8232.

Thereafter the widow appealed to the circuit court, and the award being affirmed, her appeal to this court has followed in the usual course.

The whole question in the case is whether there was sufficient competent evidence adduced to support the award of the commission.

Practically all of the facts in the case were undisputed, and in the absence of an eyewitness to the occurrence, the question is one of the proper inference to be drawn from the facts.

In addition to his duties as night watchman, it was also Williams' duty to operate both the passenger and freight elevators for the accommodation of tenants in the building who might work late at night.

His body was found in the freight elevator, opposite the first floor, about 11:25 o'clock at night, slumped down in a chair in a corner of the elevator, with the feet spread apart, the arms hanging down, and the head tilted back. His revolver, which was furnished him by his employer, was lying between his feet, but "on the left side" with reference to his body. There was also a bunch of keys on the floor, as well as a police whistle attached to a chain.

It was at once apparent that Williams had died of a gunshot wound in the head, and subsequent examination revealed that the bullet had entered the head at a point in the left frontal region just back of the temple, and had emerged at a point in the right occipital region just back of and below the level of the ear. In other words, according to the testimony of the autopsy physician, "the direction the bullet took through the man's head was slightly downward, and from front back, and slightly toward the right from the left side". There were external powder burns below the wound of entry, but none above the wound, thus indicating, according to the testimony of a ballistic expert, that the butt of the revolver had been held slightly higher than the barrel, and that the top of the end of the barrel had been pressed tightly against the flesh with the bottom of the barrel held more loosely, causing the gas to escape downward as the bullet was fired. The testimony also disclosed that holding the revolver in such a manner would have accounted for the fact that the bullet ranged downward through the brain, and that if the gun had been fired at a position some distance away from the head, there would have been powder burns all around the wound.

The body was removed to the city morgue, where a search of the body revealed the sum of $1.47 in the clothing, and also a gold watch, some keys, and a notebook. Later, a pair of extra trousers belonging to Williams was found in the janitors' supply room on the eleventh floor, in the pockets of which was the sum of $1.10. Late that day Williams had received his pay of $49.62, which had been delivered to him in a pay envelope; and in the subsequent search of the premises, the envelope was found open and empty, lying upon a table in the janitors' supply room.

Some fifteen minutes after the discovery of Williams' body in the elevator opposite the first floor, the dead body of one Charles Macalik, the building's painting foreman, was found slumped over a desk in a small office adjacent to the paint shop on the eleventh floor. Macalik likewise had died from gunshot wounds, the examination disclosing that he had been shot three or four times in the back of the head and that his left arm had also been hit by a bullet.

As for the question of the connection, if any, between the two fatalities, the record in the present case shows only that Williams' son had formerly been employed under Macalik as a member of the latter's painting crew, and that some three or four weeks before the tragedy he had been discharged by Macalik. We are reminded, incidently, that the Macalik case was itself in this court (Macalik v. Planters Realty Co., Mo.App., 144 S.W.2d 158), and that in that case the claimant, who was Macalik's dependent daughter, in seeking (as she successfully did) to establish a basis for her contention that her father's death had resulted from something intimately connected with his employment, had counted upon resentment on the part of Williams over the discharge of his son, prompting Williams to murder Macalik, and then almost immediately afterwards to commit suicide, whether from remorse, or from fear of the consequences of his act. Of course, neither the evidence nor the result in the Macalik case is in anywise controlling in the case at bar; and we mention it only as a matter of natural interest in connection with the decision of the instant case.

It is nevertheless highly significant, however, as the record discloses in both of the cases, that the bullets...