Opinion
June 16, 1955.
Appeal from Workmen's Compensation Board.
Present — Foster, P.J., Bergan, Halpern, Imrie and Zeller, JJ.
The decedent was employed as a structural ironworker on a construction job. He was thirty-one years of age, had worked for many years at this occupation and had been on this particular job five or six months. In the regular course of his work, decedent was required to erect steel girders and drive rivets into place, to climb up girders as the work progressed, to lift and manipulate heavy steel beams and to do other work in connection with construction. On January 14, 1949, during an ordinary operation on the job, the decedent was pushing and the foreman was pulling a four-wheel flat truck upon which was set a fifty-gallon open barrel containing one and a half bushels of coal, which the decedent alone had shoveled into the barrel. After proceeding about 200 feet, the foreman turned around and saw the decedent lying prone. Decedent died shortly thereafter as a result of coronary insufficiency. The employer and carrier argue that there is no logical or rational basis to conclude that one of the easiest tasks in claimant's day's work was an unusual effort. We do not agree with this argument. Though decedent was engaged in duties lighter in nature than usually performed by him, he still could have been subjected to unusual strain as found by the Workmen's Compensation Board. "Whether claimant was subjected to unusual strain is an issue of fact. The mere fact that he was performing his customary duties does not necessarily exclude the finding that on the occasion in question he was subjected to unusual strain." ( Matter of Borra v. Siwanoy Country Club, 280 App. Div. 906, 907, motion for leave to appeal denied, 304 N.Y. 985.) There is substantial medical testimony that the work this man was doing just preceding his death was sufficiently strenuous to bring on a coronary attack and cause claimant's death. Under the circumstances, the board was justified in viewing this as an industrial accident. ( Matter of Masse v. Robinson Co., 301 N.Y. 34.) Decision and award unanimously affirmed, with costs to the Workmen's Compensation Board.