Case ID: ohio-np-ns_29/html/0281-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Clevenger, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Common Pleas Court of Clinton County.
    Josephine Wallingford v. Industrial Commission of Ohio. 
    
    Decided January 20, 1932.
    
      George H. Jackson, and Smith, Rogers & Smith, for the plaintiff.
    
      Gilbert Bettman, Attorney General; R. H. Zurmehly, and C. Luther Stoaim, Prosecuting Attorney, for defendant.
    
      
       No error or appeal was prosecuted from this decision.
    
   Clevenger, J.

This is an appeal from the refusal of the Commission to allow the claim of plaintiff, the ground of the refusal being that the death of the decedent was due to natural causes and not connected with his employment. The facts are substantially as follows:

Benjamin Wallingford was in the employ of the Wilmington Castings Company as a moulder. He was an experienced employee and had worked for that company for a number of years. At the time of his death he was forty years of age, and left a widow and minor daughter as dependents. He died on May 27, 1929. His death was very sudden, and occurred at the time he was engaged in carrying ladles of molten metal to the molds. The medical evidence shows that he died of heart failure defined as “myocardial.”

The evidence discloses that the process of filling the molds' with the molten metal is as follows. The metal is reduced to a molten mass by intense heat, then they have tubs, containing large quantities of the metal, that are sent to different parts of the building. On the arrival of the tub it is the duty of each molder to get from the tub the metal to fill his molds. This is accomplished by the use of ladles with long handles. The moulder dips the ladle into the tub, filling it with the metal, then hurries to his molds.

The evidence discloses that a ladle of such metal would weigh in the neighborhood of fifty pounds, and that ordinarily a moulder would get from two to four ladles out of a tub, depending on whether he was first man at the tub. The evidence further shows that it was customary, but not always followed, for the moulder to take a short rest after two or three ladles. The evidence in this case is uncertain whether Wallingford had carried two or three ladles at the time he fell over. His companion, working close to him, saw nothing unusual until Walling-ford was falling. It seems he went down suddenly while carrying the molten metal in his ladle, and was dead by the time any one got to him. The question in the case is whether he died from any over-strain or unusual exertion in his work, or from the natural condition of a weak heart evidently affected prior to that time. The Commission concluded .that the death was not connected with his employment. A jury was waived, and the court must find the facts.

The test in a case of this kind, as the Court understands the law, is whether there was anything out of the ordinary in the work decedent was doing at the time he was stricken. A number of cases are arising where employes have died suddenly from heart failure while engaged in their work. Such a case necessarily requires a ruling under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. The best test is the question: “Would the death have occurred at the time it did independent of the work in which the employe was engaged?” The law is such, or is being so construed, that where an employe has heart trouble and dies either in the course of his employment or from the effects of some unusual strain on the heart suffered in the course of his employment, his dependents are entitled to participate in the fund.

Rosichan et al v. Hoose, (O. L. B. & R. November 2, 1931) 40 Ohio App., 25.

In the latter case the record disclosed that the employe had heart trouble. His death was due to a fall, but the Court found “that the work done by John Coleman on the morning of the accident was of such a nature as to be a possible contributing factor in causing a failure of the heart action, if that condition were found to exist.” The Commission refused the claim on the ground that the death did not occur within the course of his employment. An appeal was taken, and the Common Pleas Court decided in favor of the claimant, which decision was upheld by the Court of Appeals.

The record in the instant case shows that the deceased had complained, not long before his death, that carrying more than two ladles “kind o’ got me.” It is manifest that he had heart disease, although he may not have known it. It is hardly likely that one could die so suddenly with a disease of the heart, such as described, without its being present for some time prior to the death.

The evidence further shows that the day was unusually warm for that time of the year; also that the temperature in the room at the time was probably one hundred degrees. There is nothing to show what the temperature was ordinarily in such room. The spirit of the Workmen’s Compensation law is to be liberal toward the employe in its construction. At first this Court was inclined to think that the case of The Industrial Commission v. Davis, 119 O. S. 221, controlled this case, and that the finding would have to be against claimant, but a full consideration of that case discloses that there was no evidence that the deceased had ever suffered any effect of his known heart trouble while shoveling coal, and there was no evidence that he was actually engaged in shoveling coal at the time he was attacked with said trouble. The allegations of the petition that he was attacked while shoveling coal in the furnace were wholly unsupported by any evidence.

In the instant case the record does not disclose that decedent had a heart trouble that was well known to him and others, as in the Davis case, but it does show that he had complained at different times of not being well, and the outcome disclosed that he had heart trouble. There can be no question of his being stricken in the course of his employment. There is a very strong probability that his heart trouble was aggravated by excessive heat in the molding room or hurry in handling the molten metal as fast as it was being sent. It is very hard to disassociate his death from something connected with his employment. With that view of the case, the finding will be in favor of the plaintiff. An appropriate entry may be drawn.