Court Opinion

ID: 9560367
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:48:21.938181+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:52.742152
License: Public Domain

Blackburn, Judge.
The claimants appeal the reversal of the administrative law judge’s (ALJ) award as affirmed by the appellate division of the Workers’ Compensation Board, based on the trial court’s conclusion that there was no competent evidence to support the award.
The issue we are confronted with is whether there was “any” competent and credible evidence to support the finding by the ALJ that deceased’s heart attack was attributable to his employment, and was thus covered by workers’ compensation. See Howard Sheppard, Inc. v. McGowan, 137 Ga. App. 408, 411 (224 SE2d 65) (1976).
Kenneth Kines, age 44, a 22-year veteran of the City of Rome Police Department, died after suffering a heart attack while at home, at least 36 hours after his last work shift. As a result, there is no natural inference that the heart attack was work-related. Southwire Co. v. Cato, 250 Ga. 895, 898 (302 SE2d 91) (1983).
Claimants contended that the heart attack resulted from on-the-job stress and offered expert medical testimony to support their claim. In order to establish a causal relationship between the employment and the injury, the claimants produced the depositions of two *733expert witnesses who had never treated, nor were personally familiar with, the deceased.
In their depositions, the expert witnesses testified that, based on the hypothetical facts submitted to them, they believed that job stress was probably a significant factor in bringing on the deceased’s heart attack.
One expert was told to assume that there was no family history of heart disease, and the other was told to assume that there was only a mild to moderate family history of heart disease. Uncontroverted testimony, however, established that while there might be little family history of heart disease in the deceased’s father’s family, the deceased’s mother’s family had a long history of heart disease. In fact, the deceased’s mother was one of ten children, of which seven died from heart or cardiovascular problems.
This fact was not included in the hypothetical and would likely have resulted in a different response from the experts, whose actual responses are rendered meaningless by the omission.
In finding that the heart attack was work-related, the ALJ stated that his finding was based largely on these depositions. The trial court reversed the award of the ALJ, as affirmed by the appellate division of the Workers’ Compensation Board, ruling that certain hypothetical questions posed to the physicians misstated the facts concerning the deceased’s family history with regard to cardiovascular problems and, therefore, the responses to such questions must be disregarded.
“Testimony of an expert witness should not be admitted in evidence where his opinion is based on facts stated in a hypothetical question which are not proven by other witnesses or other competent evidence.” Ga. Power Co. v. Crutchfield, 125 Ga. App. 488, 489 (188 SE2d 140) (1972). The sufficiency of the facts supporting an expert’s opinion usually goes to the weight, rather then admissibility, of the expert’s testimony. See Krause v. Vance, 207 Ga. App. 615, 616 (428 SE2d 595) (1993). Here however, the facts not supplied to the expert witnesses resulted in questions that were not just insufficient, they were misleading. As a result, the testimony provided in the expert depositions was not competent and credible evidence.
Claimants contend that the circumstantial evidence they offered as to the good health of the deceased, and of his father and siblings, somehow conflicts with the circumstantial evidence that his mother, and her family, had a long history of heart and cardiovascular problems and that the trier of fact resolved this conflict. There was no conflict here to be resolved. The mother’s family history is undisputed, and its absence in the hypothetical question cannot be ignored. The superior court correctly concluded that the ALJ could not base his award upon responses to flawed hypothetical questions. This type *734of misleading hypothetical question and resultant response is subject to appellate review, as the ALJ’s award on this evidence was clearly erroneous and review is for the correction of errors.
There was testimony that the deceased, as a police officer, had a stressful job involving physical exertion and was demoted several years earlier. There was also evidence that the deceased had been involved in a meretricious relationship for four years and that his wife was pregnant at the time of his death, facts that would reasonably generate far more stress than would a job he had performed without physical problems for 22 years. The evidence of the deceased’s dissatisfaction with his employment does not establish a causal connection between his employment and h(s heart attack.
Accordingly, we affirm the reversal of the ALJ’s award by the superior court.

Judgment affirmed.

Beasley, C. J., Birdsong, P. J., Pope, P. J., Andrews, Johnson, Smith and Ruffin, JJ., concur. McMurray, P. J., dissents.