Court Opinion

ID: 9569164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:11:08.183469+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:50:08.849610
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
On motion for rehearing the employer Lavista Equipment Supply, perhaps misled by our comment that heart attack cases properly should be governed by the statute, (OCGA § 34-9-1 (4)), and not by an inference or presumption of work-relatedness, contends we apparently thought the board here found Elliott’s death to have been caused by heart attack. However, for the opinion makes it clear the board, as it was authorized to do, rejected the evidence of heart attack as too speculative in this case, and found the death to be unexplained, thus giving rise to the presumption of work-relatedness.
What the employer contends on motion for rehearing is that any evidence demonstrating the cause of death makes the unexplained-death presumption of work-relatedness disappear. Employer bases this assertion on language in Southern Bell v. Hodges, 164 Ga. App. 757 (298 SE2d 570), at p. 761. However, Southern Bell did not say this. It said that where cause of death is known (e.g., shooting) any evidence enabling an analysis of whether the death was work-related, destroys the presumption that it arose in the course of work. Thus is explained the holding in Zamora v. Coffee Gen. Hosp., 162 Ga. App. 82 (290 SE2d 192) that although the cause of death was known and explained (strangulation) the presumption of work-relatedness still arose because evidence to the contrary did not affirmatively establish the death did not occur in the course of employment. The evidence looked for in Zamora was evidence of work-relatedness. The “any evidence” we looked for in Southern Bell to destroy the presumption was not “any evidence” as to cause; but cause being established, what we looked for was any evidence that would enable an analysis to determine whether the (known) cause of death was work-related. This is the ultimate question.
The confusion on this point arises in the appellee employer’s (and the board’s) statements that the evidence of heart attack goes to rebut or destroy the presumption that death arose in the course of *589employment. The evidence of heart attack is evidence of cause, and once it has been rejected as proof of cause, it cannot be used again to rebut the presumption of work-relatedness. It has been rejected. The employer’s contention that “any evidence” of heart attack successfully rebuts the presumption of work-relatedness has not only never been sanctioned by this court, but it has no basis in logic.
Decided February 8, 1988
Rehearing denied March 29, 1988
Susan V. Sommers, Sandra G. Chase, for appellant.
Clarence R. Horne, Jr., for appellee.

Motion for rehearing is denied.