Case Name: Mary Reeves vs. John A. Dady Corporation
Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Connecticut
Decision Date: 1921-01-26
Citations: 95 Conn. 627
Docket Number: 
Parties: Mary Reeves vs. John A. Dady Corporation.
Judges: 
Reporter: Connecticut Reports
Volume: 95
Pages: 627–639

Head Matter:
Mary Reeves vs. John A. Dady Corporation.
First Judicial District, Hartford,
October Term, 1920.
Wheeler, C. J., Beach, Case, Curtis and Burpee, Js.
The plaintiff’s husband was employed as overseer on the second story of defendant’s mill. The recital to him by the superintendent of the mill, of the details of a surgical operation, produced a condition of faintness and he went to an open doorway to get some air. The doorway was protected by a three inch bar about three feet from the floor. While standing there, his hands were seen to slip from the bar, his knees to give way, and he collapsed and fell through the opening between the bar and the floor and was killed. The faintness was not due to any conditions connected with his employment. Held that the plaintiff was not entitled to compensation, since the injury did not “arise out of” the decedent's employment. (Two judges dissenting.)
It is not necessary to prove that the employment, or some condition connected with it, was the proximate cause of the injury. It is sufficient if some causal connection is shown between the employment and the injury; but such connection does not arise merely because an employee is injured in the course of his employment.
A workman, especially when employed in a supervisory capacity, may be “in the course of his employment” although he has tem- . porarily departed from the performance of his duties and is doing something irrelevant thereto; but an injury 'sustained by him during such departure and caused thereby, does not “arise out of” his employment, and therefore does not entitle him to compensation.
Submitted on briefs October 5th, 1920
decided January 26th, 1921.
Appeal by the plaintiff from the refusal of the Compensation Commissioner of the second district to award her compensation for a personal injury to her husband resulting in his death, upon the ground that the injury did not arise out of his employment, taken to and tried by the Superior Court in Windham County, Keeler, J.; the court affirmed the decision of the Commissioner, and from this judgment the plaintiff appealed.
No error.
The plaintiff’s husband was employed as overseer of the winding-room on the second story of the defendant’s silk mill in Putnam, and was killed by falling through an open doorway to the ground below. The accident happened during working hours. The doorway was protected by a three inch bar about three feet from the floor. The decedent was in good health, the room was large, well lighted, free from dust or smoke, and at the time of the accident the temperature was normal. Shortly before the accident the superintendent of the mill was describing to the decedent the" details of a surgical operation, whereupon the decedent said, “That makes me faint,” and after declining assistance walked to the doorway to get some air. While standing there his hands were seen to slip from the bar, his knees to give way, and he collapsed and fell through the opening between the bar and the floor. The commissioner found that the cause of the decedent’s falling from the doorway was a sudden faintness due to the recital of the details of a surgical operation, .and that the faintness did not arise out of anything connected with his employment. On these findings, which are not disputed, the commissioner held that the injury did not arise out of and in the course of the decedent’s employment, and dismissed the claim. The Superior Court, on appeal, confirmed the.award of the commissioner and rendered judgment for the defendants.
John F. Carpenter, for the appellant (plaintiff).
Wüliam B. Ely, for the appellee (defendant).

Opinion:
Beach, J.
The only difficulty in the case arises from the fact that the decedent fell through a doorway to which his employment permitted him to go, although it did not require him to be there at that time. If there were no direct evidence of the cause of his injury and death, it might be inferred that he went there for some purpose connected with his employment. Saunders v. New England Collapsible Tube Co., 95 Conn. 40, 110 Atl. 538. On this record, however, that inference is rebutted by the uncontested finding that he went to the doorway for a purpose not connected with his employment, and that he fell through it because he fainted away while standing there. It is .also found that his faintness was not due to any conditions connected with his employment, and not due to any disability which he brought to his employment. It is. not necessary for the claimant, to prove that the employment, or some condi tion connected with it, was the proximate cause of the injury. Fiarenzo v. Richards & Co., 93 Conn. 581, 107 Atl. 563. But there must be some causal connection between the employment and the injury. Larke v. Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 90 Conn. 303, 309, 97 Atl. 320. As Chief Justice Rugg has said, the causative danger must appear to have had its origin in a risk connected with the employment, and to have flowed from that as a rational consequence. McNicol's Case, 215 Mass. 497, 102 N. E. 697.
We are unable to find any operative causal connection between the employment and the injury in this case. While the open doorway protected by a bar was in some degree potentially dangerous, there is no finding that it was actually dangerous to a person in good health who might stand at or near it. The real operative and causative danger in this case did not arise until the decedent stood at the doorway in a fainting condition; and the finding is explicit that there was no causal relation between his employment and his being at the doorway while in that condition. In this respect the case at bar differs sharply from Wicks v. Dowell & Co., L. R. (1905) 2 K. B. Div. 225, where the decedent was an epilepetic and his employment compelled him to stand on the edge of the opening into which a stroke of epilepsy precipitated him. All the other cases relied upon by the claimant are consistent with the rule that the causative danger must have its origin in a risk con-' nected with the employment and flow from it as a rational consequence. That being so, and the employee being in the course of his employment, the fact that he voluntarily moved toward the spot where the accident occurred, is immaterial. Robinson v. State, 93 Conn. 49, 104 Atl. 491; De Luca v. Park Commissioners, 94 Conn. 7, 107 Atl. 611; Fiarenzo v. Richards & Co., 93 Conn. 581, 107 Atl. 563; Procaccino v. Horton & Sons, 95 Conn. 408, 111 Atl. 594. In this case the decedent did not fall out of the doorway through carelessness or because of any disability which he brought to his employment; but because of a sudden faintness due to a definitely ascertained cause, which had no connection with his employment. The finding leaves no room for inference. His hands were seen to slip from the bar, his knees to give way, and his body collapsed and fell out between the bar and the floor.
It is said that because the decedent was in the course of his employment when the injury occurred, and because the open doorway was a continuing risk of the employment, that therefore the injury in question arose out of the employment, and the claimant is entitled to compensation. Ordinarily that would be true, but it is not necessarily true. Ordinarily the fact that the employee is in the course of his employment is the very thing which subjects him to the risks of his employment; and therefore a causal relation between the injury and the employment will generally exist whenever an employee in the course of his employment is injured by a risk incident to his employment. But the term "in the course of his employment," is sufficiently elastic, especially when the employment is in a supervisory capacity, to permit the employee to depart temporarily from the performance of his contract of employment without departing from the course of his employment; and if, because of such a temporary departure from the performance of his duties, the employee is injured by a risk incidental to his employment while he is doing something utterly irrelevant to the employment, he cannot recover. Mann v. Glastonbury Knitting Co., 90 Conn. 116, 96 Atl. 368, is a good illustration of this. In that case the plaintiff, a foreman, undertook to put a bottle of milk into a hot-air pipe and his hand came in contact with a revolving fan. He was in the course of his employment and the injury was caused by a hazard incidental to his employment, but we held that he could not recover because the injury was directly caused by a temporary departure on his part from his employment, and therefore did not arise out of the employment. The general proposition involved was stated in Larke v. Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 90 Conn. 303, 309, 97 Atl. 320, as follows: "An injury which occurs in the course of the employment will ordinarily arise out of the employment; but not necessarily so, for the injury might occur out of an act or omission for the exclusive benefit of the employee, or of another than the master, while the employee is engaged in the course of his employment."
In this case the acts and omissions leading to the injury, beginning with the conversation between the decedent and the superintendent, and continuing without any break in the chain of causation to the fall through the open doorway, were wholly irrelevant to the decedent's employment, and the injury did not arise out of his employment, but out of a temporary departure therefrom.
There is no error.
In this opinion Case and Burpee, Js., concurred.