Opinion
October 27, 1967
Appeal by an employer and its insurance carrier from a decision which awarded death benefits in a heart case. Appellants concede that in 1961 as a result of an operation for an inguinal hernia caused by a compensable industrial accident earlier in the same year, decedent sustained a totally disabling myocardial infarction for which appellant carrier paid total disability compensation benefits to decedent until his death on August 18, 1964, which followed a new coronary thrombosis and myocardial infarction. On the basis of the evidence elicited from a medical expert called by them and that of an impartial specialist designated by the board, appellants contest the board's finding "that causal relationship has been established between the death and the accidental injury of 1961 and the established consequential myocardial infarction and congestive heart failure"; appellants asserting that death was due solely to the fresh myocardial infarction sustained in August, 1964, and that the 1961 accident and operation and consequential heart condition did not contribute to it. Claimant's cardiologist, however, testified "that the cardiac pathology which supervened as a post-operative complication to the herniorrhaphy of November 28, 1961, was a significant element in [decedent's] death" and, further, "that considering the serious defect persisting in his heart, as the result of a post-operative complication on November 28, 1961, and considering the magnitude with which this defect impaired his cardiac function, it is clear that his vulnerability to death from a new causally unrelated coronary thrombosis and myocardial infarction was enhanced"; and, finally, that although decedent succumbed "as the result of a new coronary thrombosis and myocardial infarction * * * that considering the magnitude of his pre-existing cardiac pathology, it is reasonably certain that this pre-existing disease played a part in determining the severity of the myocardial infarction which followed the thrombosis of August, 1964, and in determining the susceptibility to death as a result of this new pathology." It was, of course, entirely within the province of the board to accept this substantial evidence of causal relationship and to reject the medical proof opposed to it. Decision affirmed, with costs to the Workmen's Compensation Board. Gibson, P.J., Herlihy, Reynolds, Aulisi and Gabrielli, JJ., concur in memorandum by Gibson, P.J.