Court Opinion

ID: 9720061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:14:41.610782+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:50:30.431632
License: Public Domain

Otis, Justice
(dissenting).
In arriving at its decision that the injury which occurred to the employee, Harvey Weber, on December 7, 1959, caused his death on June 14, 1960, the Industrial Commission acknowledged the uncertainty of the factors which governed its determination by characterizing the employee as a “museum of medical difficulties.”
*409In my opinion the findings of fact are unwarranted by the evidence and should be reversed. Minn. St. 176.471, subd. 1(3). The commission has chosen to adopt the conclusion of two doctors who neither treated nor saw the decedent during his lifetime, and has rejected the diagnosis of the two attending physicians who cared for and operated on Mr. Weber during his illness.
The findings of the commission were based largely on the continuity of decedent’s deterioration from the time of the accident until the time of his death. However, it is undisputed that between December 7 and December 19, when the employee was first discharged from the hospital, he was found to have a normal electroencephalograph and his only serious symptoms were those of delirium tremens, from which he soon recovered. Even Dr. McClellan, the claimant’s witness, conceded that where brain hemorrhage occurs no great improvement or remission of any consequence is possible. Nevertheless, Mr. Weber was sufficiently recovered to be discharged on December 19 and remained at home until the 25th. His return to the hospital resulted from the onset of meningitis which his attending doctor testified was unrelated to trauma but accounted for his hemorrhaging. Dr. Harold Buchstein, who did a craniotomy after his readmission, testified there was no evidence of blood or bruising in the area inspected, and stated that the absence of a skull fracture and the brief period of unconsciousness suggested it was not a serious head injury. It was his testimony that had the meningitis resulted from a fall it would have become apparent very soon. Dr. Zarling conceded that the meningitis developed between December 19 and December 23. In the face of the unqualified opinions of the attending physicians that neither the meningitis nor pneumonia which caused the employee’s death had any connection with his fall, the commission chose to adopt the testimony of Dr. McClellan and Dr. Zarling elicited through hypothetical questions and an examination of tissue obtained by an autopsy. In essence Dr. Zarling expressed the opinion, based , on a hypothetical question, that decedent sustained small hemorrhages in the brain which in his debilitated condition made him susceptible to infection from which he died.
In view of the undisputed testimony that the decedent was afflicted with “a museum of medical difficulties,” in my opinion the *410commission was not justified in attributing death to the fall and an increased susceptibility to infection. Before his fall the decedent was suffering from hypertension and the effect of alcoholism and had previously experienced a number of epileptic seizures.
By the same token, I do not believe that the post mortem of Dr. McClellan demonstrated by a preponderance of evidence that the brain hemorrhage, which he testified he found, was attributable to the accident rather than to the results of meningitis. Dr. McClellan conceded on cross-examination that it was impossible to state with any degree of accuracy when the hemorrhaging occurred. In view of Dr. Buchstein’s testimony that he found no brain hemorrhage, and in the light of all of the diseases which led to the employee’s death, I believe the evidence falls far short of supporting the commission’s findings. What we said in Honer v. Nicholson, 198 Minn. 55, 56, 268 N. W. 852, seems to apply with equal force here:
“Taking the testimony of the three medical experts who where called by plaintiff, we find that the one best qualified to testify, the attending physician, stated that the accident and consequent injury were too remote to have had any connection with the fatal termination of the attack of pneumonia. The injury was minor in character. The other two doctors, while stating that deceased’s resistance had been lowered by the injury and that it was a contributing cause of death, admitted that death might have ensued in this particular case regardless of the injury. In that state of the record it seems to us that the opinions of the two nonattending medical experts (which is the only evidence attempting to connect the injury with the death) establish a remote rather than a proximate connection between the injury and the death.”
The commission has the duty of resolving issues of fact and we may not interfere if there is substantial evidence to support their findings. Nevertheless, in my judgment the medical opinions expressed by the claimants’ experts, who had no opportunity to examine the employee during his illness, were of necessity so conjectural and speculative that I believe they do not constitute evidence which preponderates in favor of the claimants’ position as a matter of law. Zappa v. Charles Manufacturing Co. 260 Minn. 217, 224, 109 N. W. (2d) 420, 424. For *411the reasons stated I would limit recovery to the period of the employee’s first confinement ending December 19, 1959.