Court Opinion

ID: 9726777
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:07:48.570133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:30.693512
License: Public Domain

Carter, J.,
dissenting.
I cannot agree that causal connection between the accident and the coronary occlusion was established. Three physicians called by the defendant testified to a complete absence of causal connection. They testified that a coronary occlusion is a result of arterial disease of long duration. At a certain stage of its progress a coronary *147occlusion is inevitable and is unaffected by trauma unless the injury is directly in the area of the diseased portion of the anatomy. The decision in this case, however, rests on the evidence of two doctors called by the plaintiff.
Dr. Arthur M. Greene testified that a coronary occlusion could result from an injury to the area of the heart or from extreme exertion. It was his opinion that the plaintiff in falling on his buttocks and the exertion of pushing the deep freeze provided a pattern that precipitated the coronary attack. He knew of no instance where such a fall precipitated a coronary attack. He could not say when the heart attack occurred nor could he point to any event of the morning that caused plaintiff’s attack. He stated that it was conceivable that a coronary attack might result from the jar of the fall but that he did not know if it could. On this point he admitted that he was in the realm of possibility only.
Dr. E. A. Watson testified that he could not say that any one thing caused the coronary attack and that it was the exertion resulting from everything that happened that induced the attack. He stated that the only sure way of determining the cause of a coronary attack was by autopsy after death. In discussing the relation of overexertion to the coronary attack he said that it was theorizing on his part but that he felt that the whole sequence of events was a pattern and if the pattern hadn’t occurred, plaintiff would not have suffered a coronary attack on the day he did. He testified that he could point to no single event that induced the coronary attack.
There is no evidence in this record that the fall on the buttocks alone produced, activated, or accelerated the coronary attack. There is evidence in the record that it did not and could not have produced, activated, or accelerated the attack. In my opinion the evidence is clearly insufficient to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the fall caused, activated, or accel*148erated the coronary attack. I submit that it takes more than proximity in time to establish causal connection between an accident such as we have here and a coronary attack.
Tliis court on several occasions has held that the burden of establishing that an accident contributed directly to the death of an employee or to the activation or acceleration of a disease is not met by mere guess, surmise, conjecture, speculation, or possibility. Nelson v. Frenchman-Cambridge Irr. Dist., 168 Neb. 37, 95 N. W. 2d 201; Ruderman v. Forman Bros., 157 Neb. 605, 60 N. W. 2d 658; Pixa v. Grainger Bros. Co., 143 Neb. 922, 12 N. W. 2d 74; Rose v. City of Fairmont, 140 Neb. 550, 300 N. W. 574.