Court Opinion

ID: 9454286
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:42:08.55378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:03.416017
License: Public Domain

DANAHER, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result):
My vote to reverse is based upon all circumstances of record analyzed in light of what I deem to be the controlling principles. Without specifying details beyond what my respective colleagues have already done, I will explain my position.
I
A claim to be compensable under the Act must stem from “accidental injury or death arising out of and in the course of employment.”1 The decedent Wheatley, a garage mechanic, had reported for duty at 8:48 A.M. on February 12, 1964, then some 18 minutes late after coming in from Beltsville. After changing into work clothes, Wheatley about 9:15 A.M. was instructed by his foreman as to the morning’s job. Wheatley placed a hammer, a chisel and a pair of pliers next to a tractor in the employer’s garage. Although he otherwise had not yet commenced the assigned task, I deem it undeniable that Wheatley had entered upon his duties and that the crucial episode under discussion was shown as a matter of law to have occurred “in the course of employment.”
II
The next question on our record arises from the requirement that the death be one “arising out of” that employment. Some have seemed to think that a claim is compensable only if the “accidental injury or death” specified in the Act shall have been caused by the employment. Acceptance of so narrow a view, that of actual “causation,” would seem unduly to limit a possible basis for a claim “arising out of” the employment, for the element of occupational hazard must be recognized. On this very point and in some situations a much broader scope must be accorded to the language as the Supreme Court has instructed us. It is enough, we have been told,
“that the ‘obligations or conditions’ of employment create the ‘zone of special danger’ out of which the injury arose.” 2
*315Ill
The Act, 33 U.S.C. § 920(a) (1964), provides:
“In any proceeding for the enforcement of a claim for compensation under this chapter it shall be presumed, in the absence of substantial evidence to the contrary—
“(a) That the claim comes within the provisions of this chapter.”
The effect to be given to the presumption so prescribed goes directly to the core of this case. Wheatley, before undertaking actual manual labor, left the garage and stepped outdoors. He had a crippled leg. “The bathroom is way in the back of the terminal,” an eyewitness explained, as he testified that he had seen Wheatley urinating in an area between two trucks in the yard, apparently only 50 feet or so from the garage. To accomplish his purpose, a trip across the yard and up a flight of steps, which might have presented no problem at all to an able-bodied fellow employee, became a condition of employment for the partially crippled Wheatley, giving rise to a “zone of special danger,” an occupational hazard. Within a matter of minutes, Wheatley collapsed and died. The Deputy Commissioner seems to have given no consideration whatever to this aspect of the “arising out of” test. He simply found — without regard to the applicable principles above stated — “that the collapse and death of the employee were not causally related to the circumstances of the employment.” Thus and therein by my assessment of the law and the failure to apply it here lay the error of law on account of which I am impelled to reverse.
The statutory presumption required refutation by substantial contravening evidence and here had been given no place as the Deputy Commissioner reached and announced his ultimate conclusion. Had he so weighed the specific issue as stipulated by the parties and then concluded that the presumption had been overcome, and additionally on substantial evidence had found subordinate facts to support his determination that the collapse and death did not “arise out of” the employment, the position of my dissenting colleagues would be unassailable. But, as I see it, since the Deputy Commissioner did not so dispose of the “arising out of” issue in light of the presumption, the conflicting evidence rule does not here apply.
By the same token I do not join the approach 3 taken by the majority, for it seems to me the result properly should be reached by the route I have been developing. I continue at the risk of some redundancy.
IY
The Deputy Commissioner found that Wheatley’s collapse and sudden death were “caused by a myocardial insufficiency due to the advanced arteriosclerotic heart disease” from which he suffered. Since on this record as I read it, and additionally by virtue of the presumption, the death clearly had occurred in the course of employment, the general principles of law do not apply as the Supreme Court has put it. The Act “announces its own rule” 4 that presumably, likewise, *316the death was one “arising out of” the employment.
Thus “[t]he employer must rebut this prima facies.” 5 The employer’s expert, its only witness, here testified directly that “[t]he absence of any specific stimulating or exertional episode makes me feel that the attack was in no way related to his employment.” 6
The Court continued “that the evidence to overcome the effect of the presumption must be substantial,” explaining further that “a finding must be supported by evidence.” 7
If an employer shall have “carried his burden” of refuting the effect of the presumption, that “presumption falls out of the case.” 8 It is not evidence by itself, for its “office is to control the result where there is an entire lack of competent evidence.”9 (Emphasis added.)
My careful reading of the evidence here persuades me that the employer utterly failed by substantial evidence to carry its burden10 of dispelling the effect of the presumption. Accordingly the result must be controlled by the statute, and upon the analysis I have respectfully submitted, reversal is required.

. Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, § 2(2), 33 U.S.C. § 902(2) (1964), hereinafter referred to as the Act.

. O’Leary v. Brown-Pacific-Maxon, 340 U.S. 504, 507, 71 S.Ct. 470, 472, 95 L.Ed. 483 (1951); and we have so applied that test, Wolff v. Britton, 117 U.S.App.D.C. 209, 213, 327 F.2d 181, 184 (1964), in determining that an employee must have encountered some occupational hazard or that the injury must have been related to his work. In the Wolff case the appellant conceded that death had resulted from an idiopathic seizure, not related to or caused by any condition of employment.

. Certain cases to which we have been pointed have no controlling effect here for each involved some clearly job-related physical exertion which served as a causal factor in precipitating the injury complained of. See, e. g., General Accident Fire & Life Assur. Corp. v. Donovan, 102 U.S.App.D.C. 204, 251 F.2d 915 (1958); Robinson v. Bradshaw, 92 U.S.App.D.C. 216, 219, 206 F.2d 435, 438, cert. denied, 346 U.S. 899, 74 S.Ct. 226, 98 L.Ed. 400 (1953), where “death in the course of employment [resulted] from an aggravation, caused, by the employment, of a pre-existing illness * * *” (emphasis added); Commercial Casualty Ins. Co. v. Hoage, 64 App.D.C. 158, 159, 75 F.2d 677, 678 (1935), where we noted “that an accidental injury may occur notwithstanding the injured is then engaged in his usual and ordinary loorlc, and likewise that the injury need not be external.” (Emphasis added.)

. Del Vecehio v. Bowers, 296 U.S. 280, 286, 56 S.Ct. 190, 193 (1935).

. Id.

. From the statement so quoted and from his testimony in its entirety, the doctor seems to have deemed necessary the demonstration of some external precipitating factor before there could be an injury “arising out of” the employment. But Del Vecchio, supra, teaches that precisely in circumstances as here shown, a claimant is entitled to the benefit of the statutory presumption.
The expert explained that the “stress and strain of trying to urinate on a cold day” is a factor since cold produces constrictions of blood vessels and it may increase the tendency or propensity toward heart attacks or sudden death.
Such in brief sum was the evidence offered “to overcome the effect of the presumption * * *.” 296 U.S. at 286, 56 S.Ct. at 193.

. Del Vecchio v. Bowers, supra note 4.

. Id.

. Id.

. Indeed, in my reading, the employer’s evidence presented no conflict with that offered by the claimant. Had it done so, the Deputy Commissioner would have been bound to resolve on the issue so created “upon the whole body of proof pro and con.” (296 U.S. at 287, 56 S.Ct. at 193) His inferences thereupon if substantially supported by competent evidence, would, of course, be controlling.