Court Opinion

ID: 9608868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:18:54.278323+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:08.332826
License: Public Domain

Carlisle, Judge,
dissenting. I think that the trial judge properly directed a verdict for the defendant in this case. In the view which I take of the evidence, there was no testimony introduced which would authorize a jury to make a finding in favor of the plaintiff. Insofar as is material to this question, the record clearly shows that an autopsy was performed on the deceased and that it revealed, among other things, that no bruises or broken bones or other evidence of traumatic injury, aside from the bleeding of the raised toenail, was found on Mr. Ilalligan’s body. Based upon the autopsy, the immediate cause of death was listed as “acute and old myocardial infarction,” with the secondary cause given as “generalized arteriosclerosis.” As testified to by one of the doctors, Mr. Halligan died of heart failure, “I would say it was acute heart failure and he had evidence of chronic heart failure also, his death was, of course, due to acute failure.”
The expert medical witnesses were asked whether the pain attendant upon the raising of the toenail would have been sufficient to have induced a heart attack in a man in the condition Mr. Halligan was in, and these witnesses testified that pain does put some stress upon the heart of anybody and that the pain attendant upon the raising of a toenail sufficient to cause the bleeding found could have been a cause of Mr. Halligan’s fatal attack. One of the medical witnesses testified at length as to the mechanics of a person’s heart, how it pumps blood, and as to what happens when a person suffers what in common parlance is referred to as a heart attack. He testified in this regard that the occurrence which ultimately produces death by “heart attack” begins several hours or even days before death ensues, and that when a person suffers a heart attack the pain is usually so severe that the natural tendency is either to sit or lie down immediately and that the patient usually clutches his chest in pain and would tend to crumple to the floor rather than to fall precipitately.
The only evidence of accident in this case is the evidence of of the raised toenail. This is true because there was absolutely *911no evidence as to how the deceased got out of the bed or that he fell.out. With respect to the toenail, however, how it became raised, and when, is left purely to speculation. Whether it occurred before, and caused, or after, and resulted from the insured’s acts on account of the onset of the fatal heart attack does not appear from the evidence. The jury would have to answer these questions by inferring one way or the other. The burden was on the plaintiff to prove her case; that is, to prove that Mr. Halligan suffered an accidental bodily injury which occasioned his death. Code § 38-103. The proof of this essential fact in this case is dependent wholly upon circumstantial evidence. But the circumstantial evidence introduced is as consistent with the theory that the injury to the toenail was inflicted by the actions of the insured subsequently to the onset of the heart attack as that it was inflicted by some occurrence prior thereto; such circumstances prove nothing. Woodruff v. American Mutual &c. Ins. Co., 67 Ga. App. 554, 557 (21 S. E. 2d 298); Martin v. Medlin, 83 Ga. App. 589, 592 (64 S. E. 2d 73); Chancey v. Shirah, 96 Ga. App. 91, 93 (1) (99 S. E. 2d 365); Furthermore, in order for a jury to find for the plaintiff in this case, it would not only be necessary for them to infer from the evidence introduced that this injury preceded the heart attack, but to further infer that the injury contributed to the heart attack. The pyramiding of such remote inferences will not be permitted in order for the jury to arrive at a verdict. Georgia Ry. & Electric Co. v. Harris, 1 Ga. App. 714 (3) (57 S. E. 1076); Spruell v. Georgia Automatic Gas &c. Co., 84 Ga. App. 657, 663 (67 S. E. 2d 178); Miller v. Gerber Products Co., 207 Ga. 385, 388 (62 S. E. 2d 174, 52 A. L. R. 2d 155). The trial court did not err in directing a verdict for the defendant.
The majority opinion implies that this rule of law stated above no longer is of force in Georgia, and they cite the parenthetical statement of Judge Powell in Lee v. State, 8 Ga. App. 413, 419 (69 S. E. 310) in support of that position. However, careful reading of that case does not reveal that it was Judge Powell’s intention to overrule the statement of the rule applied in Georgia Ry. & Electric Co. v. Harris, 1 Ga. App. 714 (3) (57 S. E. 1076), and I find no case which has done more than *912lay aside the rule in that case on the basis of well defined distinctions. On the other hand, a case which is to my mind on “all fours” with the instant case from the standpoint of its juridic facts relating to this question is U. S. Fidelity &c. Co. v. Davis, 99 Ga. App. 45 (107 S. E. 2d 571) (a case written by the writer of the majority opinion in this case), where this rule, that is, the inhibition against basing a finding of the ultimate fact upon the pyramiding of two or more inferences was so aptly and properly applied. Equally applicable is the case of Phillips v. Travelers Ins. Co., 288 Mo. 175 (231 S. W. 947).
I think that, in fairness to the litigants in this case, it must be said, first of all, that the statement of the medical witness quoted at length and with emphasis in the majority opinion was itself based on a hypothetical question which assumed that Mr. Halligan fell heavily to the floor prior to the heart attack, and assumed that he injured his toe in the manner in which it was shown that the toe was injured prior to suffering the heart attack. The majority opinion also lays great stress upon the fact that this medical witness testified that a person would not bleed as much as Mr. Halligan bled, after death, but there was not one scintilla of evidence in this case to the effect that a person suffering a heart attack dies instantaneously upon suffering such a heart attack. The testimony thus relied on is not inconsistent with the inference that Mr. Halligan suffered the heart attack from which he died, and in crumpling to the floor caught his over-long and untrimmed toenail on his stocking, thus pulling the toenail up from its bed. Nor is a contrary inference more logical. Furthermore, the fact that Mr. Halligan’s feet were near the bathroom door and his head near the foot of the bed, to my mind admits of only one conclusion, and that is that he fell either before or after suffering the heart attack while returning from the bathroom after having gotten out of bed. I do not see how the jury could logically conclude that he fell out of bed in such a manner as to place his body in the position in which it was found.
Secondly, much weight is given by the majority to the matter of the tom stocking. The nurse who came into the room when Mr. Halligan’s body was first found testified that the toe of *913the stocking on Mr. Halligan’s foot from which the bleeding came was torn when she first saw it. The witness did not testify that she looked at the stocking closely enough to ascertain this fact when she first found Mr. Halligan’s body, and I do not think that her testimony in this regard is sufficient to raise a conflict in the evidence as to whether the stocking was torn when Mr. Halligan fell or hurt his toe, or at some other time, when such testimony is considered in the light of the positive uncontradicted testimony of the superintendent of nurses in the hospital that she tore the toe of the stocking herself in order to ascertain the source of the bleeding after Mr. Halligan’s body had been placed on the bed by the orderlies.
To paraphrase the language used in U. S. Fidelity &c. Co. v. Davis, 99 Ga. App. 45, supra, the evidence relating to Mr. Halligan’s being on the floor with his toenail torn was equally consistent with the fact that he suffered a heart attack and crumpled or fell to the floor and pulled his toenail up after the attack, as it was with the fact that he pulled his toenail up and fell to the floor before having the attack. Since, under the view which I take of this case, there was no evidence at all that would indicate which of these events occurred first, and since to sustain her case it was necessary for the plaintiff to show that the accident occurred first and further that it had some causal connection with his death, I think that the inference that it occurred before the heart attack was too remote to support the further inference that it likewise had any causal connection with his death. I think that the facts in this case are clearly distinguishable from cases like Lumbermen’s &c. Casualty Co. v. Bridges, 81 Ga. App. 395 (58 S. E. 2d 849), and those cited therein on p. 401, workmen’s compensation cases, where the employees were shown by direct evidence to have engaged in physical exertion which was followed either directly or within a reasonable time by a heart attack producing disability or death. For these reasons, I dissent from the judgment of reversal in this case.
Felton, C. J., concurs substantially in this dissent.