Summary
In Lumbermen's Mutual Casualty Co. v. Bridges, 81 Ga. App. 395, 401 (58 S.E.2d 849) it was stated in a similar state of facts: "We think that these inferences are collateral, virtually only one inference, and that the problem of basing one inference on another is not involved.
Summary of this case from Halligan v. Underwriters at Lloyd'sOpinion
32961.
DECIDED APRIL 7, 1950.
Appeal; from Clarke Superior Court — Judge West. January 4, 1950.
Neely, Marshall Greene, Erwin, Nix, Birchmore Epting, for plaintiffs in error.
Riordan Taylor, contra.
The evidence authorized a finding that the employee's death was caused by heart disease aggravated by physical exertion a short time before his death, and the superior court did not err in affirming the award granting compensation.
DECIDED APRIL 7, 1950.
Mrs. Lois Bridges, widow of William Grady Bridges, filed a claim against the Athens Lumber Company and Lumbermen's Mutual Casualty Company for compensation for the death of her husband, employee of the Athens Lumber Company. The evidence authorized the finding of the following facts: that prior to an attack of measles deceased was employed by the lumber company as yard-foreman; that he was away from work three weeks due to the measles; that shortly thereafter he was off another three weeks because of illness of his child; that upon returning to work he was employed as a laborer handling and stacking lumber; that on the day of his death he was lifting one end of 1 by 6 inch oak boards weighing about 30 pounds each, with the then yard-foreman lifting the other end; that they would throw lumber aside until the foreman came upon a board he desired which the foreman would hand to another employee to load upon a jeep trailer; that in handling such boards deceased did not move from his position or take any steps; that after a dozen such boards were loaded the foreman told deceased to drive the jeep and trailer around to another pile; that deceased got into the jeep and the foreman and other worker walked around to another pile; that in about five minutes the foreman walked back around to the jeep and found deceased dead sitting at the steering wheel of the jeep; that the jeep motor had not been started; that there was no out-cry; that the foreman was in a hurry for the lumber but that they were not rushing; that the loading operation covered a period of from 30 to 45 minutes, this being immediately after the lunch hour; that deceased had, since his return to work, complained occasionally of weakness and a hurting in the chest; that deceased got off from work one day after his return to see a doctor about the hurting in his chest; that deceased made no complaint on the day of his death; that deceased had, even prior to his attack of measles, complained occasionally of heartburn; that deceased said he would have heartburn after eating sweets; that the day of the death was a cool day. At a hearing Dr. Minor L. Blackford testified in substance: that a sudden death almost invariably is the result of something happening to the heart; that death which is instantaneous is almost bound to be due to the disease of the heart itself and that the disease is usually due to final plugging up of arteries that supply the heart muscles, they having been previously diseased, whether known to be previously diseased or not; that when one talks about heartburn it is pretty generally understood as being a burning in the chest, which in most cases is due to too much acid in the stomach; that heartburn may be very difficult to distinguish from angina pectoris; that a lay person who has pain in the chest cannot tell whether it is due to indigestion or whether it is due to disease of the coronary arteries; that if a man has repeatedly, or several times in several weeks prior to his death, complained of heartburn and several other times complained of pain in his chest, it would render a coronary thrombosis more likely; that he did not think the measles or the weakened condition of the deceased had anything to do with his death, but that if deceased had pain in the chest before he ever got the measles, and he continued to have pain in the chest while he was at work so much that he had to leave, he thought such made the final diagnosis as stoppage of the coronary arteries pretty decisive; that if deceased was being hurried the day of his death, such acted as the "last straw that broke the camel's back"; that he thought heartburn was generally known to everybody as a burning in "here (indicating)," which may be due to acid or may be due to heart disease and that it was often very difficult to tell which; that in view of the outcome of the case he thought there was very suggestive evidence that before deceased got the measles he had coronary and was suffering and that the particular rushing and doing the work a little harder than he was accustomed to doing was the immediate precipitating cause; that pain in the chest might have no relation, whatever to the heart, but that because of the fact that deceased died after complaining of pain in the chest, he thought such pain deceased had of heartburn was indicative of coronary insufficiency; that he was inclined to think the "pain" deceased complained about being in his chest was the same as that deceased referred to as "heartburn"; that pain in the middle of the chest brought on by exertion usually indicated coronary heart disease and in the majority of cases was angina pectoris; that such pain usually results from insufficiency of the coronary arteries, their inability to carry enough blood to the heart; that as to what was the cause of deceased's death his opinion was that "we have evidence that he had a disease of the coronary arteries because he complained of heartburn and because of the way things turned out, the pains he had in his chest on other occasions were of the same nature, and then, that on the day of his death having a diseased coronary, which he had probably several years, they just were not able to keep up with the tax on him at this time when he died"; that as to what killed deceased he could not swear; that people die from heart conditions who have not taken any exercise for an hour or more before they die; that the fact that deceased died a month or two after he had begun to complain of pain in his chest caused him to think deceased's pain was due to coronary insufficiency and not too much acid; that after engaging in hurried work it would have taken one, two or three hours for deceased's heart to return to the condition that it was in before the hurried work; that as to the lifting of the boards, the number and time involved, the deceased died and that, therefore, if deceased had only lifted one board, that one board was the thing that "broke the camel's back"; that he thought deceased had an acute coronary insufficiency, probably due to the flaring up of the coronary arteries, which is called coronary thrombosis; that his answer to the hypothetical question, "that a man aged 38 lifting boards weighing approximately 30 pounds, with another man at the other end of the board, assuming that he lifted a dozen such boards throughout 45 minutes, and that five minutes after he lifted the last board he died, in your opinion did the physical exertion of the labor that he was performing contribute to the death? Assuming that he had a heart disease, then did the exertion of his physical labor contribute to the culmination as you say and thereby contribute to his death?" was, "I believe that it did in the sense the last straw that broke the camel's back, evidently the amount of work that was done didn't do any damage to the lesions of the heart other than the lungs." Dr. Jeff L. Richardson testified substantially: that in the course of his experience he had come in contact with people around thirty-eight years of age who had complained of what is termed heartburn after having eaten and that it was not an unusual occurrence; that it could occur with heart disease as Dr. Blackford brought out, but that the fact that it always comes after eating would suggest more some digestive disturbance; that people have heartburn after eating various things, more often fats and greases, and sometimes sweets, that those people have digestive disturbances; that a man with a heart disease could have pain that he might describe as heartburn and it could be brought on by food, but that he felt sure that if the man was going to have pain after eating he was also going to have pain after exertion and that he was apt to have more on exertion than he would on eating unless he was an unusual heavy eater; that hardening of the arteries and particularly hardening of the coronary were the most common heart diseases among middle-age people; that some heart attacks kill instantly; that coronary thrombosis was one that sometimes produces instant death; that as to whether attacks of coronary thrombosis occur only after a person has engaged in hurried or strenuous physical work, no; that they were by-products of disease of the coronary arteries and that they could come on at any time; that a great many people die in their sleep, while in bed, as a result of coronary occlusion; that there had always been a question in his mind as to how much exertion had to do with it, but that he had seen cases that he felt sure exertion did produce the attack of coronary thrombosis; that he did not know what deceased died of; that in answer to the question, assuming that deceased had heart trouble, would there be any causal relation between the work, lifting the boards, and the heart attack, no; that he would say in this case the amount of physical exertion deceased had had nothing to do with the sudden death, because doctors take people they know to have advanced disease and put them through more exercise than deceased went through in order to make a diagnosis; that they put them over two steps which are ten inches high, anywhere from fifteen to twenty times, which is equivalent to going thirty steps ten inches high, very rapidly, which is a good deal of exercise; that he was making a comparison between this case and the exercise he put patients through; that he couldn't compare the degree of the disease in the two cases because he didn't know what degree of disease deceased had, if any; that he was not "sold" that deceased had heart disease at all; that it was thought by some men, and he agreed, that in some instances coronary thrombosis could be precipitated by physical exertion and that usually it took a pretty severe physical exertion; that he didn't think labor helped any condition; that he did not think deceased's weakened condition would have anything to do with it; that the amount of exertion that would enter into it would be dependent upon the amount of disease deceased had in his coronary arteries; that he thought a sick man who exercised imprudently would probably precipitate an attack of coronary thrombosis quicker than a well man, if his attack was going to be precipitated by exercise; that, in answer to the hypothetical question whether "a man of 38 years has a heart disease which you call coronary thrombosis, and during a period of 45 minutes he is engaged in lifting approximately a dozen boards weighing about 30 pounds apiece, and five minutes after he lifts the last board he dies, in your opinion is it possible that this physical exertion caused by the manual labor contributed to the precipitation of the disease and his death?" — "No." After hearing the above testimony, the deputy director awarded the claimant compensation. Athens Lumber Company and Lumbermen's Mutual Casualty Company appealed the award of the deputy director to Clarke Superior Court, which affirmed the award, and Athens Lumber Company and Lumbermen's Mutual Casualty Company excepted.
The court did not err in affirming the award granting compensation. The board was authorized to find from the evidence that the employee's death resulted from a diseased heart condition accentuated by physical exercise a short time before his death. The evidence was sufficient to meet the test of moral and reasonable certainty. The circumstances surrounding the death authorized a finding that the death of the employee occurred in less than five minutes from the time he got into the jeep. The fact of a sudden death authorized the finding that it was due to heart disease, in the absence of any other proven fact tending in any degree to show that the death was due to other causes. The finding was authorized that if deceased had such an advanced stage of heart disease as to cause almost instant death the amount of physical exertion shown by the evidence was a contributing factor and tended to hasten death. It is contended by the employer and insurance carrier that the evidence did not show that the deceased had heart disease and that the hypothetical question answered by Dr. Blackford containing that assumption had no probative value. The facts of the case authorized the inferences that the employee had heart disease and the physical effort contributed to his death. We think that these inferences are collateral, virtually only one inference, and that the problem of basing one inference on another is not involved. But if it is true that the inference that the exertion contributed to the death is an inference based on the inference that the employee died of heart disease, neither inference is too remote and complies with the test of validity, having as a basis the connection of cause and effect and the observations of human experience. It is true that this court, speaking through Judge Powell, in Georgia Ry. Elec. Co. v. Harris, 1 Ga. App. 714 ( 57 S.E. 1076), said that an inference resting only upon an inference is not permissible. However, Judge Powell took care of this statement, in his own inimitable way, in Lee v. State, 8 Ga. App. 413 ( 69 S.E. 310), where the court in effect stated that the statement in the Harris case was an application of the law of circumstantial evidence rather than the announcement of a general rule on the subject. "Inferences may be based on facts whose determination is the result of other inferences, so long as the first inference is based on such evidence as to be regarded as a proved fact and the conclusion reached is not too remote". 31 C. J. S. 730, § 116; 95 A.L.R. 182; 20 Am. Jur. 169, § 165; 1 Wigmore on Evidence, § 41. In principle, this conclusion is supported by many cases of the Supreme Court and this court, among which are: Travelers Insurance Co. v. Young, 77 Ga. App. 512 ( 48 S.E.2d 748), and cases cited; United States Casualty Co. v. Richardson, 75 Ga. App. 496 ( 43 S.E.2d 793); Standard Accident Ins. Co. v. Handspike, 76 Ga. App. 67 ( 44 S.E.2d 704).
The court did not err in affirming the board's award of compensation.
Judgment affirmed. Sutton, C.J., and Worrill, J., concur.