Court Opinion

ID: 9791730
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:16:45.585267+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:38.155725
License: Public Domain

FORT, J.,
specially concurring.
I concur in the majority opinion except for that portion wherein the court expressly abandons the position taken by this court in Fagaly v. State Acc. Ins. Fund, 3 Or App 270, 471 P2d 441, Sup Ct review *588denied (1970), and Svatos v. Pac. N.W. Bell Tel. Co., 4 Or App 396, 478 P2d 648 (1970), Sup Ct review denied (1971), adopting the personal risk factor doctrine enunciated by Larson① on the ground that “this is at odds with the legal causation test set forth by the Oregon Supreme Court in Coday [Coday v. Willamette Tug & Barge, 250 Or 39, 440 P2d 224 (1968)].”
In Fagaly, we discussed the problem at length and said:
“Larson, in his article, points out:
“ * * [T]he causation issue can be solved by invoking the distinction which exists in compensation law between neutral-risk situations (where there is no obvious personal or employment element contributing to the risk) and personal-risk situaations (where a personal risk contributes to the injury, although perhaps in a relatively small degree).
“ ‘In heart cases, the effect of applying this distinction between neutral-risk and personal-risk situations would be clear. If there is some personal causal contribution in the form of a previously weakened or diseased heart, a heart attack would be compensable only if the employment contribution takes the form of an exertion greater than that of non-employment life. Note that the comparison is not with this employee’s usual exertion in his employment, but rather with the exertions present in the normal non-employment life of this or any other person. * * *’ (Italics in original.) * * 3 Or at 277.
We reiterated this in Svatos.
The personal risk factor doctrine in heart cases *589applies only where the decedent had “a previously weakened or diseased heart,” not in a case where there has been no such prior weakness or disease. It is concerned with legal causation, not medical.
The court does not overrule Fagaly and Svatos because it has concluded that the personal risk factor doctrine is unsound or that the reasoning expressed therein is faulty. It does so solely because it concludes those cases are “at odds” with Coday.
Whether, as the majority contends, this doctrine is “at odds” with Coday, requires an examination of the latter.
Coday involved a workman who sustained and survived an on-the-job heart attack. The court there did not discuss the personal risk factor doctrine at all. On its facts no reason in my view appears why it should have. From their examination it seems abundantly clear that the work Coday was doing involved exertion greater than in nonemployment life. The court simply held that legal causation existed. It then considered the question of medical causation, found that it was not established, and denied recovery.
Nor can I conclude that the Supreme Court in Olson v. State Ind. Acc. Com., 222 Or 407, 352 P2d 1096 (1960); Grandell v. Roseburg Lbr. Co., 251 Or 88, 444 P2d 944 (1968); Lorentzen v. Compensation Department, 251 Or 92, 444 P2d 946 (1968), or Clayton v. Compensation Department, 253 Or 397, 454 P2d 628 (1969), adopted or rejected the personal risk factor doctrine. In none of them was it necessary to discuss it, and in none of them did it do so.
Certainly in my view it is at least as reasonable to assume since the Supreme Court both in Fagaly and Svatos considered and denied a petition for review, *590that it did not consider either opinion “at odds” with Coday, as it is to assume, as the majority does here, that adoption by us in Fagaly and Svatos of the personal risk factor doctrine was contrary to the holding in Coday, which neither discussed nor required its consideration.
I agree, in short, that the Supreme Court has not adopted the personal risk factor doctrine, but I do not agree that it has rejected it either directly or by necessary implication. Under such circumstances this court has the right, and indeed the duty, to take its own position.

 A. Larson, The “Heart Cases” in Workmen’s Compensation: An Analysis and Suggested Solution, 65 Mich L Rev 441, 470 (1967).