Court Opinion

ID: 9699399
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:22:31.170754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:50.737720
License: Public Domain

POMEROY, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
Like the majority, I believe that under the amended Workmen’s Compensation Act,1 a heart attack is a compensable injury as long as the claimant proves that it occurred in the course of employment and was related thereto. Applying such a standard to the cases at bar, I agree that competent medical evidence was introduced to show that the decedent Vincent Squillacioti suffered a fatal heart attack in the course of, and related to, his employment with the Edward S. Pincus Company. Accordingly, I concur in the majority’s affirmance of the order of the Commonwealth Court in that case. (No. 523)
With respect to the appeal at No. 570, however, involving the decedent Raymond Lenz, I cannot conclude that the medical evidence was sufficient to establish, in the words of the Commonwealth Court, the “causal connection between decedent’s work and his injury and subsequent death.” *299Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board, et al. v. Ayers Philadelphia, Inc., 23 Pa.Cmwlth. 249, 252, 351 A.2d 306, 308 (1976). In my mind, that testimony establishes only that the decedent died at work;2 there is nothing to indicate that the conditions of employment contributed in any degree to the occurrence of the injury. Because no connection between work and the heart attack has been established, compensation benefits were improperly allowed. I must accordingly dissent to that portion of the Court’s order which affirms the order of the Commonwealth Court in the appeal at No. 570.

. Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736, as amended, 77 P.S. § 411(1).

. The opinion testimony of Dr. Harvey A. Harris, claimant’s medical expert, concerning the cause of decedent’s death was in part as follows:
Q. Would you now state that opinion and the extent to which the death is related to his work.
A. According to the information that I received the most probable and definite cause of death was acute myocardial infarction due to the suddenness and the way the decedent was found. Based on medical facts, the only way you could prove it one hundred percent, as I said, was to do an autopsy. The fact that the man worked who had a cardiac irregularity and who had hypertensive vascular disease, who had a mild diabetic condition and who had just probably two or three months prior to that had undergone a cataract operation, was at work, overtime, and an operation which is stressful to him — not so much in physical stress as it is in mental stress, the factors are there that would relate to his pressure going up and his heart giving out on him in common terms.
Q. In your opinion what was the cause of his death?
A. The immediate cause was the infarction and the precipitating cause was probably the environment.
Q. What do you mean by “the environment”, Doctor?
A. His work. He did not die at home. He did not die on the street. He was at work, at his table, and from my knowledge of Ray Lenz, he was a very dedicated, honest person who gave you an hour and a half work for every hour you paid him.
Furthermore, while Dr. Harris did state that increased stress at work could have precipitated the heart attack, he was unable to state whether the decedent was actually under stress while working.
It is within the competence of a medical expert to give his opinion to the effect that known conditions of stress precipitated a heart attack, but it is not proper for him to speculate that stress conditions associated with the employment existed simply because a heart attack occurred while the employee was at work. I am satisfied that Dr. Harris’ testimony in this case was, in essence, nothing more than speculation as to the requisite of a “relationship” between employment and injury.