Wright v. Graniteville Co. Vaucluse Division

• Decision Date: 26 January 1976
• Docket Number: No. 20156,20156
• Citation: 266 S.C. 88,221 S.E.2d 777
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: Virginia WRIGHT, et al., Respondents, v. GRANITEVILLE COMPANY, VAUCLUSE DIVISION, and American Mutual Liability Insurance Company, Appellants.

Page 777

221 S.E.2d 777

266 S.C. 88

Virginia WRIGHT, et al., Respondents, v. GRANITEVILLE COMPANY, VAUCLUSE DIVISION, and American Mutual

Liability Insurance Company, Appellants.

No. 20156.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Jan. 26, 1976.

Ernest J. Nauful, Jr., of Callison, Tighe, Nauful & Rush, Columbia, for appellants.

Franklin D. Beattie, Jr., Aiken, for respondents.

LEWIS, Chief Justice:

The deceased, Shade Wright, Jr., forty-two (42) years of age and an employee of appellant, Graniteville Company, for twenty-seven (27) years, allegedly sustained an injury while about his work on March 29, 1972, aggravating the preexisting disease of diabetes, which resulted in his death about ten (10) days later, on April 7, 1972. An award by the Industrial Commission to respondents (dependents of deceased) for death benefits under the Workmen's Compensation Act was affirmed by the lower court, and the employer and carrier have appealed. We affirm.

While the seventeen (17) exceptions on appeal are treated in the briefs as raising six (6) questions, all are embraced within the basic issue of whether there was any competent evidence to sustain the findings of the Industrial Commission that the death of the employee resulted from an injury by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment.

Appellant's position that the evidence fails to sustain the award is based to a large extent upon the asserted incompetency of testimony of one of the medical experts, and whether certain testimony of the widow was inadmissible as violative of the 'Dead Man's Statute,' Section 26--402, 1962 Code of Laws.

Appellants' objection to the testimony of one of the medical witnesses concerns the testimony of Dr. Lattimore who testified for respondents as a medical expert on the issue of causation. He had never treated the employee but, in response to a hypothetical question, testified that in his opinion the injury sustained by the employee most probably aggravated a preexisting disease, resulting in death. The hypothetical question was permitted over appellants' objection that it was based upon material facts which were never proven. The objection was properly overruled.

A full statement of the long hypothetical question is unnecessary. Both respondents and appellants propounded hypothetical questions to their respective medical experts based, in general, upon testimony that the deceased, 42 years of age and in good health, sustained an injury to his shoulder, diagnosed as a fracture; that there was an immediate onset of pain, becoming disabling on the following day; and that thereafter he took prescribed medication, became nauseated, went into diabetic shock or diabetic acidosis and died. Although some of the details assumed in the hypothetical question propounded by respondents to Dr. Lattimore may not have been specifically proven, the material facts assumed were within the range of the foregoing evidence and there was no error in permitting the expert to give his opinion in response thereto. As stated in Chapman v. Foremost Dairies, Inc., 249 S.C. 438, 154 S.E.2d 845:

'It was sufficient that substantially all material facts necessary to the formation of an intelligent opinion as to causation were included in the hypothetical question, and supported by the evidence.'

Neither is there merit in appellants' contention that the award of the Commission should be reversed because the widow was permitted to testify, over objection, as to conversations with the deceased, her husband.

The widow was permitted to described the details in the series of events in which she participated, or observed, from the day of injury until her husband's death ten (10) days later. In doing so, she repeated statements by the deceased of how the accidental injury occurred, the report of the accident to the employer, and the pain suffered.

Testimony of the widow as to complaints of pain by the deceased were clearly admissible. Sligh v. Newberry Electric Cooperative, Inc., 216 S.C. 401, 58 S.E.2d 675.

The other testimony of the widow as to statements made by the deceased with reference to how the accident occurred, if technically inadmissible, afford no reasonable ground upon which to reverse the award, because her testimony thereabout was purely cumulative to other testimony establishing the injury. Sligh v. Newberry Electric Cooperative, Inc.,supra.

The award of the...