Opinion
No. 27173
Decided February 15, 1939.
Workmen's compensation — "Injury" defined — Death from acute dilation of heart not compensable, when.
CERTIFIED by the Court of Appeals of Lucas county.
In the early morning of November 27, 1935, David Goodman, 48 years old, a baker by trade, while engaged in his usual occupation and in a comparatively short time after he had commenced work suffered an acute dilatation of the heart from which he died on the same day.
Goodman's employer being a contributor to the State Insurance Fund, the widow filed a claim for death benefits with the Industrial Commission, which claim was disallowed. She then brought suit in the Court of Common Pleas of Lucas county. The jury trial resulted in a verdict for the Industrial Commission, upon which judgment was entered.
An appeal was taken to the Court of Appeals where the judgment below was affirmed. However, the judges of that court found such judgment in conflict with the judgments of other Courts of Appeals in the cases of Davis v. American Rolling Mills Co., 54 Ohio App. 298, 7 N.E.2d 238, and Tinker v. Firestone Tire Rubber Co. (Summit county, 1935), and certified the record to the Supreme Court for review and final determination.
Messrs. Welles, Kelsey, Coburn Harrington and Mr. Harley A. Watkins, for appellant.
Mr. Herbert S. Duffy and Mr. Thomas J. Herbert, attorneys general, Mr. Eugene Carlin, Mr. John Rossetti and Mr. E.P. Felker, for appellee.
The record in this case would indicate that David Goodman died from a heart condition which came upon him while he was occupied with his customary duties as a baker. Does such incident come within the classification of an "injury" entitling his dependents to death benefits from the State Insurance Fund?
Whatever the rule in other jurisdictions may be, the Supreme Court of Ohio, through a long line of decisions, has consistently defined the meaning of the term "injury," as used in the Constitution and statutes, to be physical or traumatic injuries accidental in their origin and cause; the result of a sudden happening at a particular time. Industrial Commission v. Franken, 126 Ohio St. 299, 185 N.E. 199; Industrial Commission v. Lambert, 126 Ohio St. 501, 186 N.E. 89.
All of the eye witnesses testified that Goodman was at his bench handling dough in the usual way and under the usual conditions, when he collapsed from no apparent cause. He was not engaged in any extraordinary effort at the time; in fact there is no disclosure of anything occurring to him by reason of the activities, conditions or environments of his employment which can possibly be denoted as a compensable injury within the rules so often announced by this court.
It hardly seems necessary to remark that in cases of this general type the peculiar facts of the individual case are largely controlling. Here, the members of this court are unanimously of the opinion that the appellee was entitled to a directed verdict or judgment in its favor upon the rehearing record before the court, and on the basis that no injury was shown.
Such determination makes other errors assigned by for the appellant of little practical importance, relating as they do to medical testimony, claimed to have been improperly introduced and received, on the point of whether the decedent's heart dilatation was attributable to the general character of the work he was performing.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
Judgment affirmed.
WEYGANDT, C.J., DAY, ZIMMERMAN, WILLIAMS, MYERS, MATTHIAS and HART, JJ., concur.