174 A.D. 571 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1916
The only question is whether the death was the result of an accidental injury. The Commission has so found. Its finding is challenged on the ground that there is no evidence tending to sustain it, and that the death was the result of chronic endocarditis and was not accidental. The employee was about thirty-seven years of age, five and one-half feet high, weighing about 160 pounds, apparently a strong, able-bodied man and well nourished and was performing his usual work well and cheerfully and had worked regularly. On May twenty-third he was examined for insurance in the John Hancock Insurance Company, and the doctor found him all right. He died October fourteenth following. The widow says that he did not appear to be sickly and never complained; that he worked every day and worked Sundays, too, and the week of his death he had worked overtime, starting at six o’clock a couple of mornings. The coroner’s physician saw the body the day after death, and made his diagnosis entirely from what the widow told him and the casual appearance of the body. No autopsy was had. He says the widow told him that her husband had . not been feeling well for two or three days and she stated his symptoms, which he could not relate; but he inferred from the symptoms and the appearance of the body that death was due to chronic endocarditis. Hi's evidence, however, is not very satisfactory upon that point. At the time of his death the
We áre not called upon to determine whether the evidence clearly established that this death was accidental. The finding of the Commission upon a question of fact is conclusive upon us, and the only question is whether there is any evidence to sustain such a finding. If there is no evidence the finding may be treated as error of law. If the heavy and unusual strain aggravated the cardiac lesion and caused a sudden dilatation of the heart and consequent heart failure, resulting in death, the death may well be considered as accidental and within the act. In Matter of Broleski (171 App. Div. 959) the deceased had chronic heart disease, the valves of the heart being thick and curled up, but he came to his death through over-exertion, or
In McCahill v. New York Transportation Co. (201 N. Y. 221) the injured person died of delirium tremens, precipitated or hastened by the accidental injury, caused by the defendant’s negligence, and it was held that the negligence was the proximate cause of the death. In the present case there was no perceptible physical injury, but death resulting from a strain, as stated, may well be called accidental. The award of the Commission should be affirmed.
Award unanimously affirmed.