Opinion
34453.
DECIDED APRIL 11, 1953. REHEARING DENIED MAY 13, 1953.
Workmen's compensation. Before Judge Byars. Spalding Superior Court. October 22, 1952.
Burt DeRieux, Marshall, Greene, Baird Neely, for plaintiffs in error.
Christopher Futral, contra.
Where the findings of fact by the Board of Workmen's Compensation were not inconsistent, supported the award, and were themselves supported by evidence, in that the evidence and the reasonable inferences therefrom authorized the board to find that the claimant's husband died of a subarachnoid hemorrhage sustained as a result of, or accelerated and aggravated by, an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of his employment, the superior court did not err in denying the appeal from the board's award of death benefits to the claimant.
DECIDED APRIL 11, 1953 — REHEARING DENIED MAY 13, 1953.
Mrs. Minnie M. King made a claim for death benefits under the Workmen's Compensation Law against Thomaston Mills, as employer, and American Mutual Liability Insurance Company, as insurer, on account of the death of her husband, Stanley C. King. On the hearing of the case, the defendants admitted that, on August 23, 1951, Stanley C. King was employed by Thomaston Mills and was earning more than $55 per week, and that the employer had notice of the accident on this date and had notice of King's death on August 26, 1951.
The claimant testified substantially as follows: She is the widow of Stanley C. King, and there are no minor children surviving him. King was working on one of the looms tended by the claimant in the weaving room of Thomaston Mills; he was putting in a gear on the loom, which would not take up and roll the cloth being woven. He was checking to see if the loom would take up the cloth, when the claimant went to the water house. He said he had to clean up the job and pick up his tools, the waste, gears and bolts. This was shortly after 6 a. m. on August 23, 1951. The claimant, Mrs. King, came back from the water house two or three minutes later, and found her husband lying on the floor in a puddle of blood. He was about 60 feet from where he had been working and was right at the water house. He seemed to be unconscious and was carried to the office in the front of the mill, where they washed the blood from his face. The claimant was not allowed to see him, and when she saw her husband next, he was in a hospital in Atlanta, unconscious. He had had a pretty bad cold for a day or two before it happened and was not working on Monday and Tuesday, but came to work on Wednesday night. He worked on the shift from midnight until 8 a. m.
John Connally's testimony was substantially as follows: He was the assistant overseer of Thomaston Mills and was on the same shift as King was. He came to King after he had been carried to the office, and asked King what the trouble was. King was sitting in a chair, complaining that his head hurt, and said: "I went to the water house; I felt kind of sick, and I went in there and thought I'd get over it. When I come back out, everything just turned black. The last thing I remember I was feeling — trying to catch on something to keep from falling so hard." Connally sent King to the hospital in Griffin and called Dr. Floyd. King had a little black place over his left eye, which they bathed with alcohol while getting him ready to send to the hospital. King told the witness he fainted, but did not know what caused it.
Wilbur B. Matthews testified that he was employed by Thomaston Mills as a loom fixer and was working on the shift with King when King was hurt. He first saw King sitting in the office. He called the doctor and helped carry King to the hospital. On the way, King asked him to rub the back of his head, and, when asked what happened, King replied: "I was coming out of the water house and stumbled and walked a little piece to get [to] a workbench, and everything blacked out on me." King said he did not know what he hit, and he had a little cut over one eye.
Dr. Thomas J. Floyd testified, in brief, as follows: He met King at the hospital in Griffin. King said that he had become fatigued, began to get dizzy, and felt bad; and that he went to the Coke box, drank a Coke, and was returning to the room where he worked when he again became dizzy and fell. King had a minor laceration of his left eye and also in the back of the septal region — back of his head. King was cold, clammy, and complained of a headache; he remained in the hospital for about six or eight hours. King was conscious, and at that time had high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis. A numbness and weakness of his right extremity developed. The witness's diagnosis was a subarachnoid hemorrhage or stroke, with an outside possibility of some type of intracranial injury due to trauma. As to whether the shock of the fall and hitting his head tended to accelerate King's condition or to make it more likely to happen, Dr. Floyd did not know whether that could be answered. In his opinion, King began to get faint when he walked into the building. "He had minimal change and the bleeding continued and he fell and falling was incidental."
Dr. Ivan B. Ross deposed in substance as follows: He is a pathologist and performed an autopsy on King's body. His findings were that King had extensive subarachnoid hemorrhages; that there was extensive hemorrhaging into the third ventricle, the aqueduct and the fourth ventricle of his brain; and that King had bilateral bronchial pneumonia and pulmonary edema, which were probably terminal conditions. This means that there was bleeding into the subarachnoid space and into the aqueduct and into the ventricles, the hollow spaces within the brain. There was no evidence of a fractured skull, or of aneurism or rupture, or of trauma. King had extensive arteriosclerosis. His death was not connected with his injury, but one cannot definitely substantiate that. A sudden accident, such as a blow on the head, could cause the blood pressure to become elevated. A fall, where the head hits a piece of machinery, could cause a subarachnoid hemorrhage. No doctor can truthfully say that the fall was not the cause of King's death, although it is not probable that it was.
Dr. James A. Simpson deposed in answer to written interrogatories as follows: He saw King at the hospital in Atlanta after King was transferred there from Griffin. King's spinal fluid was bloody. Although King rallied somewhat at the hospital, his condition became worse, and he died at 8:55 p. m. on August 26, 1951, of a spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage. Dr. Simpson does not believe the hemorrhage occurred as a result of King's fall. A head injury might produce a subarachnoid hemorrhage, but the type of subarachnoid hemorrhage that occurs as a result of a head injury is usually of a diffuse character and is not confined to the basilar portion of the brain.
The director who heard the case found: that, at about 6 a. m. on August 23, 1951, King had a fall caused by an attack of some type, or had a fall which caused an attack of some type and which subsequently led to his death on August 26, 1951; that King had a fall, and in falling struck his head either on a piece of machinery or the concrete floor, with sufficient force to lacerate the skin; that King was suffering from arteriosclerosis; that King died as the result of an accident which arose out of and in the course of his employment; and that the said accident aggravated his pre-existing condition and was the proximate cause of his death. Based on these findings, the director awarded death benefits to the claimant. The employer and its insurance carrier appealed first to the full board and then to the superior court. The full board affirmed the award of the single director, and the exception here is to the judgment of the superior court overruling the appeal to that court.
It is first contended by the appellants that the findings of fact by the Board of Workmen's Compensation do not support the award to the claimant. There was no finding made that the exertion of King's work contributed to his injury and death. However, even if exertion did not produce his stroke, if the stroke occurred before his fall and caused him to fall, and if his falling against machinery or on the floor in turn aggravated his pre-existing diseased condition or accelerated his death from that condition, then the accidental injury was a proximate cause of his death, and his death was compensable. U.S. Casualty Co. v. Richardson, 75 Ga. App. 496 (2) ( 43 S.E.2d 793).
If, on the other hand, the fall occurred before the stroke, was accidental, aggravated King's previous condition, and precipitated his fatal hemorrhage, then his death is again considered to have been the result of an accidental injury and so compensable.
These two theories, which appear in the findings of fact by the single director, are not inconsistent or opposing; for they both depend upon the fact that the impact of the fall against the machinery of the mill or onto the floor aggravated a preexisting condition, and whether such condition was an incipient hemorrhage or advanced arteriosclerosis seems to be more a matter of degree than of difference. Dr. Simpson, for instance, testified that King's change from one condition to the other was "minimal." Since the injury to King's head was found to have a causal relation to his death by subarachnoid hemorrhage, it does not matter whether his fall was strictly accidental or was the result of his own condition, provided his injury was not the result of his wilful misconduct, intoxication, or an assault by another employee for personal reasons. Code §§ 114-102, 114-105. The findings of fact support the award, and are not inconsistent with one another.
There was evidence to support the finding that King was afflicted with arteriosclerosis, and there was further evidence that he had been unable to work for two days previous to the date of his injury, as he had influenza or a bad cold. There was no question but that King fell; and, from the fact that the front and back of his head bore lacerations, it was inferable that as he fell he struck the loom, near which he was found lying, and the floor.
It is contended by the appellants that there was no evidence that the blow sustained by King in falling had any relation to his subsequent death, as was the case in Aetna Casualty c. Co. v. Chandler, 61 Ga. App. 311 ( 6 S.E.2d 142). There the employee died of encephalitis, an infectious inflammation of the brain, and there was no evidence that the exertion of the employee's labor had accelerated the disease. The substance of the expert testimony in the present case was that, in the doctors' opinions, the impact of the fall was "incidental" to King's death; that it cannot definitely be substantiated that King's death was not connected with his injury; and that, while it was not probable that the injury caused King's death, no doctor could truthfully say that the fall was not the cause of his death. Dr. Ross, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on King's body, testified that the hemorrhages were "extensive"; Dr. Simpson, who attended King during the last days of his life, testified that the type of subarachnoid hemorrhage occurring as a result of a head injury is usually of a "diffuse character." Such expert opinions are advisory and are not binding upon a fact-finding tribunal when such opinions are as broad in scope as the question of fact at issue, such as the cause of death or disability. Blanchard v. Savannah River Lumber Co., 40 Ga. App. 416, 424 ( 149 S.E. 793); Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. Williams, 44 Ga. App. 452 (1) ( 161 S.E. 853); Ocean Accident c. Corp. v. Lane, 64 Ga. App. 149 (1) ( 12 S.E.2d 413); American Motorists Ins. Co. v. Blaylock, 84 Ga. App. 409 ( 66 S.E.2d 126). "Where an employee, after sustaining an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of his employment, is disabled continuously until the time of his death shortly thereafter [citing], or where expert opinion is submitted to the effect that the injury sustained had some connection with the subsequent death of the employee [citing], there is ordinarily a natural and reasonable inference, sufficient to support a finding by the board, that the accidental injury was the proximate cause of the employee's death, in the absence of other than conjectural evidence to the contrary." Lockheed Aircraft Corp. v. Marks, ante.
The evidence and the reasonable inferences therefrom authorized the board to find that King died of a subarachnoid hemorrhage, sustained as the result of, or accelerated and aggravated by, an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of his employment. As the findings of the board were supported by the evidence, the judge of the superior court did not err in overruling the appeal from the award by the Board of Workmen's Compensation of death benefits to the claimant.
Judgment affirmed. Worrill, J., concurs, and Felton, J., concurs in the judgment.