Court Opinion

ID: 9773417
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:45:12.924443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:53.550361
License: Public Domain

W. O. MURRAY, Chief Justice.
I do not concur in the opinion of the majority and here give my reasons for my dissent:
In this case the findings of the jury were favorable to appellant, but such findings were set aside and judgment rendered by the court for appellee, notwithstanding the verdict of the jury.
Only two issues were submitted to the jury. In answer to the first issue the jury found that the injury which Levy Arthur Jacoby suffered on or about the 26th day of March, 1955, while in the course of his employment at Joske’s, was a producing cause of his death, and, in answer to the second issue, the jury found that the death of Levy Arthur Jacoby was not solely caused by a cancerous condition, if any, independent of and disassociated from the injury sustained by him on or'about the 26th day of March, 1955. If there was evidence to support these findings of the jury it was error for the trial court to disregard them and render judgment non ob-stante veredicto.
The testimony shows that prior to March 26, 1955, Levy Jacoby was a robust vigorous man who worked regularly. On that date he accidentally fell against a conveyor, injuring his chest and fracturing a rib. Thereafter his appearance and disposition changed radically and progressively from an apparently well and healthy person to an acutely ill person who was increasingly suffering from pain. He was hospitalized from September 13, 1955, to September 23, 1955, during which time the rib was removed. At the site of the fracture a large *926cancerous growth was found to have developed which had eaten away the bone acid encased the fractured portions. His health continued to deteriorate, causing him to cease working, to become bedfast, until July 23, 1956, when he died. The cancerous mass which formed around the broken rib was not the primary site of the cancer in his body, but was a secondary site of a preexisting cancer.
Dr. Bloom, who first treated Jacoby, testified that at the time of the injury there was no outward evidence of a cancer, but the cancer must have existed at the time of the injury, otherwise the rib would have healed. He further testified that the effect of the injury was to cause the cancer to spread more rapidly, and went on to explain this to great extent. He stated that he felt the injury shortened Jacoby’s life to some extent, by exciting the cancerous growth, resulting in an early death.
Dr. Nixon, who removed the rib, testified for the appellee that in his opinion the accidental injury in question neither aggravated nor accelerated the pre-existing cancer. As to trauma to a pre-existing tumor affecting the progress of the cancerous condition, generally speaking, he did not believe it has anything to do with it, but he was not sure. He stated there were two schools of thought on the question and that no one knows why cancer starts, why it grows and why it spreads.
Dr. O’Neill, the radiologist who had interpreted the X-ray film and who had treated Mr. Jacoby with X-ray therapy, testified for the appellee. He would not 'express an opinion as to whether the trauma received in the accidental injury hastened Mr. Jacoby’s death or not. Pie would not say that it did not hasten his death. He admitted there were authorities who would say one way and others the other, but that no one really knows.
Dr. Jacob, the pathologist who diagnosed the cancer in the mass which was removed with Mr. Jacoby’s rib, testified for appellee. He said he could not deny that the injury could have accelerated the cancerous condition and contributed to his death. He could not say whether the injury had shortened Mr. Jacoby’s life. He believed it possible that the injury to the rib hastened his death.
Thus, none of appellee’s three doctors would categorically deny that Dr. Bloom was right in his opinion that the injury did, by accelerating the pre-existing cancer, hasten Levy Jacoby’s death.
All of this evidence was sufficient to raise the issues submitted to the jury, and, in my opinion, the trial court erred in setting aside the verdict and rendering judgment contrary to the findings of the jury.
The majority opinion is based largely upon Texas Employers’ Ins. Ass’n v. Burnett, 129 Tex. 407, 105 S.W.2d 200; Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Sparrow, Tex.Civ.App., 122 S.W.2d 286, and Jones v. Traders & General Ins. Co., 140 Tex. 599, 169 S.W.2d 160. I do not consider these cases in point. In the Burnett case the Court held that there could be no recovery where death was due directly to typhoid fever, and independent intervening disease or agency having no connection with or relation to an original injury, even though it might have to some extent reduced the power of resistance of the employee and in that manner contributed in some degree to his death. I have no quarrel with this decision. It is unquestionably a correct statement of the law in this State. In the case at bar we have no independent intervening disease such as typhoid fever.
In the Sparrow case the Court went no further than to hold that contracting a cold and pneumonia from exposure while on the job does not constitute the receiving of an accidental injury within the meaning of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Art. 8309, Vernon’s Ann.Civ.Stats. This holding is plain, when you take what the Court said in the Sparrow case in connection with the holding in Texas Employers’ Ins. Ass’n v. Jackson, Tex.Com.App., 265 S.W. 1027. The Court said [122 S.W.2d 288]: “The facts of the Jackson Case, * * * cited *927by Judge German in support of his opinion in the Burnett Case, seem to us to make it controlling on the facts of the case at bar.” In the Jackson case the Court said that successive wettings of an employee by rain, resulting in his contracting a cold and pneumonia, did not constitute the receiving of an “injury” or a “personal injury” within the meaning of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. It is admitted in the case at bar that the deceased did receive an injury within the meaning of the Workmen’s Compensation Act.
The Jones case goes no further than to hold that where a deceased committed willful suicide, such suicide was an independent agency, breaking the causal connection between an injury to the employee and the employee’s death.
My view of the present case is supported by the following cases: Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. Deen, Tex., 312 S.W.2d 933; Texas Employers’ Ins. Ass’n v. Smith, Tex.Civ.App., Galveston 1951, 235 S.W.2d 234, writ refused; Trinity Universal Ins. Co. v. Walker, Tex.Civ.App., Austin, 203 S.W.2d 308; Travelers Ins. Co. v. Rowand, 5 Cir., 1952, 197 F.2d 283; Dundee Woolen Mills v. Chism, 1949, 215 Ark. 126, 219 S.W.2d 628; Welch v. Essex County, 6 N.J.Super. 422, 68 A.2d 787, affirmed 6 N.J.Super. 184, 70 A.2d 779; Dixie Pine Products Co. v. Dependents of Bryant, 228 Miss. 595, 89 So.2d 589; Boyd v. Young, 193 Tenn. 272, 246 S.W.2d 10; Taylor v. Mansfield Hardwood Lumber Co., La.App., 65 So.2d 360; Mooney v. Copper Range R. Co., 318 Mich. 120, 27 N.W.2d 603; Charleston Shipyards v. Lawson, D.C.S.C., 141 F.Supp. 764.
Appellant is entitled to have the evidence construed in a light most favorable to the findings of the jury, and when this is done there can be no doubt about the sufficiency of the evidence. It is true that the doctors agreed that Levy Arthur Jacoby was going to die, and this is true of every human being, but there is ample evidence to show that Jacoby would not have died at the time he did except for the injury which he received. Therefore, the injury was a contributing cause of his death. It did not have to be the' sole cause, and even if cancer was the major cause of his death, if the injury was a contributing cause and brought about his death at an earlier time than it would otherwise have occurred, appellant can recover and the pre-existing cancer is no defense. Norwich Union Indemnity Co. v. Smith, Tex.Com.App., 12 S.W.2d 558, affirming Tex.Civ.App., 3 S.W.2d 120, certified question answered 117 Tex. 103, 298 S.W. 403; Millers’ Indemnity Underwriters v. Schrieber, Tex.Civ.App., 240 S.W. 963 (error refused); Texas Employers’ Ins. Ass’n v. Jimenez, Tex.Civ.App., 267 S.W. 752 (error dismissed); Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Watson, Tex.Civ.App., 131 S.W.2d 1103 (dismissed, judgment correct).
I respectfully dissent from the opinion of the majority.