Opinion
April 24, 1933.
July 14, 1933.
Workmen's Compensation — Employee — Sun stroke — Actual collapse after leaving place of employment — Accident — Course of employment — Evidence — Sufficiency — Award.
In a claim for compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act, the claimant's evidence established that her husband was employed by the defendant in digging a ditch and that he had been exposed continuously to the rays of the sun for a long period of time. The claimant's husband, after completing his work, started toward his home and staggered as he walked. After walking a short distance he collapsed and later died. The claimant's medical expert stated that in his opinion the employee died of sun stroke.
In such circumstances there was sufficient competent evidence to sustain the finding of the compensation authorities that the claimant's husband met with an accident in the course of his employment and the award of compensation for the claimant will be affirmed.
A sun stroke is a compensable accident within the terms of the Workmen's Compensation Act and it is not necessary that the actual "stroke", causing complete collapse, must occur in the course of employment in order to be the subject of compensation.
Appeal No. 112, April T., 1933, by defendants from judgment of C.P. Allegheny County, July T., 1932, No. 2955, in the case of Margaret Clancy v. Booth Flinn Company and Maryland Casualty Company.
Before TREXLER, P.J., KELLER, CUNNINGHAM, BALDRIGE, STADTFELD, PARKER and JAMES, JJ. Affirmed.
Appeal from award of compensation to claimant by Workmen's Compensation Board. Before PATTERSON, J.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the Superior Court.
The court sustained the award and dismissed the appeal. Defendants appealed.
Error assigned, among others, was the order of the court.
Robert A. Applegate, and with him Rose Eichenauer, for appellants. — There having been nothing accidental in decedent's exposure to the sun and his sun stroke having been suffered after he was through work for the day, he did not sustain an accident in the course of his employment: Nickman v. New York Life Insurance Co., 39 Federal (2nd) 763; Lacey v. Washburn Williams Co., 309 Pa. 574.
Daniel F. McCarthy, and with him James J. Burns, Jr., for appellee, cited: Gausman v. Pearson Company, 284 Pa. 349; Lane v. Horn Hardart, 261 Pa. 329.
Argued April 24, 1933.
This is a workman's compensation case. Thomas Clancy, upon whose death the claim is founded, left home in apparently good health at seven o'clock in the morning and with other workmen began digging a ditch, and was exposed continuously to the rays of the sun upon what was the hottest day of the year, the thermometer registering 97 degrees. He was employed by Booth Flinn Company who with the insurance carrier are the defendants. His regular quitting time was 5:30 P.M., but the job having been completed, the workmen were discharged earlier. There is some evidence that the claimant's decedent left before the other workmen. He had a street car pass in his hand, when seen after he left work, and apparently intending to board a street car the decedent walked toward the street car stop which was directly across from the tool box used in connection with the job. He was walking unsteadily, and the observer thought he was intoxicated, although an examination of the man at the hospital negatived that supposition. When asked, by the fellow-workman, where he was going, the decedent replied he was going home. Evidently changing his intention of boarding the street car, or presumably confused, he proceeded along the street, and was found unconscious at the corner of a street a few blocks away from where he worked. He never regained consciousness. The appellants strenuously argue that the claimant's decedent having been stricken an appreciable time after he left work for the day and while he was walking along the street "the accident" did not occur in the course of his employment.
A sunstroke is a compensable accident. In this state this is no longer an open question. The position taken by the appellants seems to be that the actual "stroke," so-called, causing complete collapse, must occur in the course of employment, and that when the employe stops working, whatever happens thereafter, cannot be made the subject of compensation. Surely if this man had left the trench where he was working and gone a few feet and collapsed, one would hardly be able, with any show of reason, to argue that his accident did not occur during his employment, although what may be called its culmination did not occur until a short period of time had intervened. Following the same line of thought, when the workman, in this present case, left work and succumbed a few blocks away, and in the meanwhile for a portion of the distance, which he traversed, staggered so, as already stated, that his fellow-workman thought he was intoxicated, we think it was a reasonable deduction that he was stricken at work, and that the loss of consciousness and subsequent death were attributable to the prostration occurring during his employment. If he had been affected while working, but not entirely disabled, and had been taken to a hospital and died, the fact that the death occurred at a place other than the one where he worked, would not have defeated recovery. It was shown that the heat stroke or prostration was the direct or superinducing cause of the death, and that is all that is required to sustain claimant's case. Dr. Ingram testified, "The termination of the sun-stroke was his death in the hospital. The beginning of that sun-stroke was sometime during that day."
We all agree that there was sufficient testimony to sustain the award of compensation.
The judgment of the lower court is affirmed. Appellants to pay the costs.