Court Opinion

ID: 9694477
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:43:24.225539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:02.119846
License: Public Domain

William J. Brennan, Jr., J.
(concurring). I state my concurrence separately because I regard as wholly illusory the distinction between usual and unusual strains and exertions which since Lohndorf v. Peper Bros. Paint Co., 135 N. J. L. 352 (E. & A. 1947), has been the test of compensability in heart cases. I share with Mr. Justice Heher and Mr. Justice Jacobs the view that if the injury occurred by reason of the strain at work, whatever the degree of the strain, there is an accident in the statutory sense and there is no occasion for an inquiry whether the strain was an event or happening beyond the mere employment itself. I sub*615scribe fully to Mr. Justice Heher’s persuasive reasoning in support of that view in his concurring opinioms in the Lohndorf case and in Temple v. Storch Trucking Co., 3 N. J. 42, 46 (1949). See also his dissenting opinion in the first Neylon case, Neylon v. Ford Motor Company, 8 N. J. 586, 594 (1952).
Mr. Justice Jacobs aligned himself with that position in his opinion on the rehearing of the Neylon case, Neylon v. Ford Motor Company, 10 N. J. 325, 327 (1952). This is the first opportunity afforded me since my appointment to this court to record my agreement with it. Having sat in the Neylon case as a judge of the Appellate Division, I did not sit on the rehearing of the appeal here.
Mr. Justice Heher and Mr. Justice Jacobs join me in the conclusion that the judgment of the Hudson County Court should be reversed and that of the Workmen’s Compensation Division reinstated, as we are satisfied that decedent’s attack and ensuing death resulted from the strain of his work.