Opinion
January 9, 1952.
Appeal from Workmen's Compensation Board.
Present — Foster, P.J., Heffernan, Brewster, Bergan and Coon, JJ.
For twenty years claimant worked as a milk salesman and truck driver in the course of which he carried from one to twenty-five cases of milk at each stop and made approximately thirty-five stops each day. On September 17, 1949, while taking a case of milk off a truck he said: "I got a severe pain in the left side of my chest." He stopped for a while and then resumed work although the pain continued. He said: "It lasted all day, and it continued. * * * the pain continued to be more severe". Three days later the pain "got so severe" that claimant called a physician who told him to stop work. The diagnosis was coronary thrombosis. The physician was of the opinion that "the accident described by" the claimant was competent to cause the condition. This description by claimant of the events of September 17th, which the physician had before him, included not only the sharp pain at the onset of the attack, but the continuance of the pain which got "more severe" as the day's work progressed. There is proof by the claimant of increasing severity of the pain as he continued his work three days later and was required to stop. It is true, as appellants say, that the work on the day of accident itself was not different from claimant's usual work, and that no doctor stated in exact language that the continuance of the work aggravated the attack to bring the case literally within Matter of Carlin v. Colgate Aircraft Corp. ( 276 App. Div. 881). But the increasing severity of the pain while claimant worked immediately after his initial attack, followed by a disability closely related in time, could have been accepted by the board as proof of identity of the time and circumstance of the beginning of the physical condition sufficient to find there was an accident. The physician's testimony in relation to the day of the initial attack is broad enough to give some support to the inference which the board could draw from claimant's description of events. Besides this, the board found the disability was due to "unusual * * * strain", which, of course, could be based on the view that while the work was not different it became unusual when claimant continued his effort after the initial attack. Decision and award unanimously affirmed, with costs to the Workmen's Compensation Board.