Case ID: pa_277/html/0040-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Curiam,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Hornetz v. Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co., Appellant.
    
      Workmen's compensation — Injury—Death by dilatation of heart —Causal connection between injury and death.
    
    An award for the death of a workman will be sustained where the evidence shows that death was due to dilatation of the heart caused by an anesthetic administered to him for the purpose of performing a surgical operation due to a compound fracture of a finger sustained in the course of his employment.
    Argued February 13, 1923.
    March 19, 1923:
    Appeal, No. 45, Jan. T., 1923, by defendant, from judgment of C. P. Schuylkill Co., March T., 1922, No. 284, sustaining decision of Workmen’s Compensation Board, in case of Mary Hornetz v. Philadelphia & Beading Coal & Iron Co.
    Before Moschziskee, C. J., Frazer, Walling, Kephart and Schaffer, JJ.
    Affirmed.
    Appeal from decision of Workmen’s Compensation Board which affirmed award of referee in favor of claimant. Before Koch, J.
    The opinion of the Supreme Court states the facts.
    Decision affirmed. Defendant appealed.
    
      Error assigned, inter alia, was judgment, quoting it.
    
      Jno F. Whalen, with him George Ellis, for appellant,
    cited: Fink v. Axle & Spring Co., 270 Pa. 476; Morgan v. Coal & Iron Co., 273 Pa. 255.
    
      Henry Houck, for appellee.
   Per Curiam,

We adopt the following excerpts from the opinion of the court below: “In this case claimant’s husband sustained a compound fracture of the index finger of Ms right hand, in the course of his employment, on the 31st of March, 1921. He went to the State Hospital at Fountain Springs the next day [to be] operated on by Doctor J. C. Biddle......His death was due to dilatation of his heart, which was caused by the anesthetic administered to him for the purpose of performing a surgical operation on his injured finger. The injury to his finger was ‘violence to the physical structure of his body’...... The violence caused the injury, .the injury caused the operation, the operation caused the ansesthetization, the ansesthetization caused dilatation of the heart and dilatation of the heart caused death. Hence there was a causal connection between the [original] violence and [the subsequent] death.”

It is necessary to add only that there is ample testimony to sustain the award made by the referee and approved by the compensation board and the court below.

Judgment affirmed.