Case Title: Matter of Compensation of Bales

Citation: 294 Or. 224, 656 P.2d 300

Docket Number: 

State: oregon

Court: Oregon Supreme Court

Date: 1982-12-21T00:00:00Z

Document:
656 P.2d 300 (1982)
294 Or. 224
In the matter of the Compensation of Orville A. Bales, Claimant.
Orville A. Bales, Respondent On Review,
v.
STATE ACCIDENT INSURANCE FUND CORPORATION, Petitioner On Review.
No. 80-03397, CA A23327; SC 28780.

Supreme Court of Oregon, In Banc.
Argued and Submitted November 1, 1982.
Decided December 21, 1982.
*301 Darrell E. Bewley, Salem, State Acc. Ins. Fund, argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner on review.
Benton Flaxel, North Bend, argued the cause and filed the petition for respondent on review. With him on the brief in the Court of Appeals was Flaxel, Todd & Nylander, North Bend.
LENT, Chief Justice.
The issue is whether the opinion evidence of an expert that a claimant's heart attack was not caused by his job activity should be given "less weight," as a matter of law, because the expert belongs to a school of medical thought that holds that stress does not cause heart attacks. In this case, the Court of Appeals, Bales v. SAIF, 57 Or. App. 621, 626, 646 P.2d 83 (1982), held that the opinion should be given less weight, relying upon what this court said in Clayton v. Compensation Department, 253 Or. 397, 454 P.2d 628 (1969). We quote from the Court of Appeals decision:
57 Or. App. at 625-26, 646 P.2d  at 84-85. The Court of Appeals reversed the Workers' Compensation Board's decision, in which the claim was held not to be compensable.
We allowed review under ORS 2.520 to clarify the effect of our decision in Clayton v. Compensation Department, supra.
Under the rule of Weller v. Union Carbide, 288 Or. 27, 29, 602 P.2d 259 (1979), we take the following historical facts as found by the Court of Appeals:
Bales v. SAIF, 57 Or. App. 621, 623, 646 P.2d 83 (1982).
The "physician in North Bend," a general practitioner, opined by letter, which was received by SAIF on April 7, 1980, that
This opinion was rendered by the treating physician after he had the benefit of consultation with the "cardiac specialist in Eugene" who performed the coronary angiogram.
By letter dated April 8, 1980, SAIF denied the claim.
By letter dated April 11, 1980, SAIF asked the Eugene specialist for an opinion whether the work activity caused the heart condition or if the condition was the result of "natural disease progress." The Eugene specialist wrote, in toto:
Claimant's counsel wrote to a cardiologist who taught at the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center, requesting his opinion on causation. The teaching cardiologist had the entire medical file to examine and was made aware of the conflicting opinions of the North Bend and Eugene doctors as to causation. The teaching cardiologist did not physically examine the claimant but expressed his conclusion as follows:
At the hearing before the referee, the medical and hospital files and the reports of the three doctors were received in evidence. The testimony of the Eugene specialist upon deposition was also received. To get the full flavor of that witness' testimony, we shall quote liberally from the deposition. Upon examination by claimant's counsel, the witness was asked the reason for his letter opinion in full, supra.
The doctor went on to distinguish between a heart attack and "sudden death syndrome."
Claimant's counsel sought to ascertain what the doctor meant by a heart attack:
Claimant's counsel returned to the issue of causation:
On examination by SAIF's counsel, the witness elaborated:
We turn to an examination of the precise question presented to us in Clayton v. Compensation Department, supra. The claim was for an accident which occurred in 1965 and was, therefore, tried by jury under the then-existing law in workers' compensation cases. The claimant had suffered a fatal heart attack while he was on the job. This court stated the crucial question as being whether the stress and fatigue suffered by claimant on the job was a causal factor in producing his heart attack. The only medical witness was the same cardiologist, Dr. Griswold, who rendered an opinion favorable to the claimant in the case at bar. In Clayton, the witness testified that the medical profession does not "understand how stress may or may not contribute to such an episode." He indicated that the question in Clayton's case on causation was close but that:
253 Or. at 401, 454 P.2d 628. The defendant moved for a directed verdict on the ground that this was insufficient to carry the case to the jury on the issue of causation. The trial judge allowed the motion but submitted the case to the jury under then ORS 18.140(2).[3] The jury found, in answer to an interrogatory, "that the work activity of the plaintiff * * * [was] a material, contributing, precipitating or causal factor in producing or hastening the death of" plaintiff. The trial court thereafter entered judgment notwithstanding the verdict for defendant on the trial court's perception of Dr. Griswold's testimony as not being sufficient to establish a medical probability of causation. The question on appeal in Clayton, therefore, was whether the court could say there was no evidence to support the verdict. Oregon Constitution, Article VII (Amended), Section 3. The question was not whether this, or any, court should subscribe to any particular school of medical thought. Where a verdict is directed against a party, or where judgment notwithstanding the verdict is entered after verdict, the losing party is entitled to have all evidence in his favor considered as being true.
This court made the statement that:
*306 253 Or. at 402, 454 P.2d 628. It is a strange statement, considering our role under the constitution. We were not required to enter upon factfinding in Clayton; we did not cite any other case in which we had made such a finding. The statement is not, and clearly should not have been, a rule of law. We concluded that the evidence in Clayton was sufficient to present a case for the jury's resolution as a matter of fact. Our result was correct, but the case does not stand for the proposition that any given witness' testimony is to be disregarded as a matter of law because of the school of medical thought to which he belongs. On the other hand, the testimony of a medical witness should not necessarily be given less weight, as a matter of law, simply because he espouses the thoughts of a minority of the medical profession.[4]
Because the Court of Appeals believed that this court required that the Eugene specialist's opinion was to be given less weight because of his faction's school of thought that stress never causes heart attacks, the cause must be remanded for the Court of Appeals to exercise its factfinding function upon the basis of what weight that court finds should be accorded to the testimony.
Reversed and remanded to the Court of Appeals.
[1]  In arriving at his opinion, the cardiologist assumed correctly that the claimant was engaged in work on the morning in question that was more strenuous than the work he had previously performed. He also assumed that the claimant, at the relevant time, had been involved in pulling "heavy timbers" off the green chain. The words "heavy timbers" were not used by any witness at the later hearing before the referee to describe the kind of lumber claimant was pulling from the green chain. It appears to be uncontradicted that the green lumber he was pulling was sometimes one inch, and sometimes two inches thick, that it was from three to six inches wide, and some of it was up to twenty-four feet long. It seems fair to say that the heaviest lumber he pulled, therefore, would be a green 2 X 6, twenty-four feet long. There is no direct evidence as to what such a piece of "dimension" lumber would weigh.
[2]  Dr. Griswold is the cardiologist from the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center mentioned earlier in the text.
[3]  ORS 18.140(2) provided:

"In any case where, in the opinion of the court, a motion for a directed verdict ought to be granted, it may nevertheless, at the request of the adverse party, submit the case to the jury with leave to the moving party to move for judgment in his favor if the verdict is otherwise than as would have been directed."
Compare, ORCP 63 B.
[4]  The medical truth of yesterday may well be the laughing stock of today; today's medical truth may be likewise treated tomorrow. History teaches us that the vast majority of doctors 100 years ago, both in practice and in the universities and hospitals, believed Dr. Ignaz Phillipp Semmelweis not only to be wrong, but probably not completely sane, simply because he insisted that a doctor ought to wash his hands with a watery solution of chloride of lime before delivering a baby if the doctor had just been dissecting a cadaver or engaged in some other activity that had caused the doctor's hands to become unclean. Semmelweis' observations of the high incidence of puerperal fever in mothers whose babies were delivered with the assistance of doctors whose hands and clothing were unclean led him to believe there was a causal connection between the lack of cleanliness and the ensuing fever. See, e.g., "Immortal Magyar" by Frank G. Slaughter, M.D., 1950. The work of Joseph Lister was eventually to explain why Semmelweis was right, but he was right even when he was a minority of little more than one. In any field of science, today's truth may tomorrow be shown to be false. Consider the history of the views of planetary revolution. Were Johannes Keppler and Galileo, on the one hand, or those who believed the sun revolved around the earth, on the other hand, correct? Who were in the majority, and who in the minority, in that time?

It is to be remembered that the witness who testifies to an expert opinion is subject to cross examination concerning how he arrived at that opinion, and the cross examiner is to be given great latitude in eliciting testimony to vitiate the opinion. Wulff v. Sprouse-Reitz Co., Inc., 262 Or. 293, 309, 498 P.2d 766 (1972).
The factfinder must discharge his task on the record made in the particular case. The facts found upon the record and evidence in one case do not become a rule of law to be applied to the determination of the facts upon another record and other evidence. Bend Millwork v. Dept. of Revenue, 285 Or. 577, 585-587, 592 P.2d 986 (1979).