9 A.2d 742 | Pa. | 1939
In this case the Superior Court reversed a judgment of the Common Pleas entered in favor of defendant, and directed judgment to be entered on the award to plaintiff which had been made by the Workmen's Compensation Board (
Plaintiff's husband, hereinafter referred to as decedent, was a machinist by trade and worked for defendant, Miller Printing Machine Company, in Pittsburgh, as a "planer hand." On March 17, 1936, a part of that city was flooded. The water in defendant's plant reached a height of eleven feet, filling the basement and the first floor and covering the machinery with mud and dirt. When the waters had receded defendant employed a corps of workmen to clear up the debris, and directed the regular employes, including decedent, to clean their machines. Decedent started on this task about a week after the flood had occurred, but the floors were still damp and muddy. After working for eight days he became ill, and a day or two later called in a doctor, who made a diagnosis of pneumonia, which he attributed to the conditions under which decedent had been working. Decedent's death, as a result of the pneumonia, occurred shortly thereafter. *458
We thus have for consideration another of the perplexing cases in which prostration is suffered or disease contracted as the result of exposure to excessive heat, cold or other unusual environmental conditions, and the question arises whether such circumstances can be said to constitute an "accident." A study of the decisions upon that subject in the Superior Court and in our own Court reveals that, while they do not all agree in the reasoning and the principles upon which they purport to rest, they are not incapable of reconciliation. It would seem helpful, in considering the present case, to classify the more characteristic ones in order to obtain a guide to the proper adjudication of this type of litigation.
The first class comprises the cases where there is an involuntary, unexpected, fortuitous happening which causes the disease. This is the most familiar type, embracing what would universally be conceded to be accidents pure and simple. For example, where a lineman falls from a pole as a consequence of coming in contact with a wire charged with electricity, and fractures a rib, from which, a week later, lobar pneumonia develops (Murdock v. New York News Bureau,
The second group consists of cases where the work or act performed by the employe is voluntary, and not marked by any abnormal or unusual feature, but where there occurs an unexpected and unusual pathological result; that is to say, where the accident resides in the extraordinary nature of the effect rather than in the cause. A familiar illustration is where one engaged in ordinary manual labor unexpectedly suffers a muscular strain or internal lesion, as, for example, where the exertion in moving a piano causes an abscess which superinduces pneumonia (Wolford v. Geisel Moving Storage Co.,
The third group, more indefinite but nevertheless well established, is where the exposure is, from a technical standpoint, voluntary, and the resulting pneumonia or similar disease reasonably foreseeable, but where the "accident" consists of an unusual and suddenly developing concatenation of circumstances which necessitates impulsive rather than deliberate action and under conditions markedly different from those attendant upon the usual course of the employe's regular work. For example, a workman was suddenly called upon to attempt a rescue of his father who had been buried by the slide of a culm bank; the effort lasted about 2 1/2 hours; a large quantity of water was used in the rescue work and the employe was drenched from his knees down; the result of this exposure was a cold which later took the form of pneumonia. The act thus performed by the employe was voluntary and under conditions from which a resulting pneumonia might readily have been anticipated, but compensation was allowed because of the extraordinary circumstances which demanded prompt action on the part of the employe under unusual and exceptionally unfavorable conditions (Jones v. Philadelphia Reading Coal Iron Co.,
The class of cases just discussed is exceptional and to be distinguished carefully from the final group, which comprises those cases where the exposure causing the pneumonia or similar disease is not only intentional but deliberate and protracted, and in the regular course of the employe's work, and therefore there is no accident either in the happening of an untoward event, or in an unexpected and exceptional result, or in a chain of extraordinary events subjecting the employe to an exigent and unanticipated exposure foreign to his ordinary employment. Hence, in these cases compensation was properly refused. As has been frequently pointed out, an employer is not, under the Workmen's Compensation Act, an insurer of the life and health of his employes. Thus where emphysema, a disease of the lungs, is contracted by continued contact of the employe with smoke and fumes thrown off by electric generators, there is no accident within the meaning *462
of the Act, but rather an occupational disease (Mauchline v.State Insurance Fund,
In our opinion the facts in the instant case present a situation falling within the final, or non-compensable, group of cases above described. It is true that the flood in the City of Pittsburgh, occurring two weeks before decedent's illness, was an "accident," and if it had caused an emergency situation which impelled decedent, suddenly and unexpectedly, and outside of the ordinary course of his work, to expose himself to abnormal conditions which brought on an attack of pneumonia, he might have been justified in claiming compensation. But an accident preceding the one upon which the claim is based is of significance only if it causes an exigent situation, which, by a chain of succeeding circumstances, culminates in injury, as in the Jones, Heisler, Roth, and Evans cases hereinbefore discussed. Thus the San Francisco earthquake of some years ago was an "accident," but an employe engaged in the task of salvage and restoration during the several *464 months or years which followed would not, by reason of the earthquake, have become entitled to workmen's compensation if, in the course of his work, he contracted pneumonia through exposure to weather conditions. While, in the present case, it was the flood which made necessary the cleaning of the machinery, this operation was a protracted labor, and those who engaged in it voluntarily and deliberately exposed themselves to the dampness which they knew existed. Decedent worked for eight days before he became ill, returning to the job each day in the usual fashion. Nor can the surrounding conditions during that time be fairly characterized as extraordinary. There was no sudden, intense exposure to water or to cold. The most that can be said is that there was dampness in the plant and mud on the floors as lingering effects of the flood. That decedent was by trade a machinist does not affect the situation from a legal standpoint. Even assuming — what is far from certain — that in cleaning his machine he was doing something foreign to his ordinary work, he engaged in that occupation for the eight-day period, nor did the fact that he was occupied in cleaning instead of operating the machine in any way expose him to greater risk of disease. We cannot escape the conclusion that there is no "accident" within the meaning of the Workmen's Compensation Act when an employe contracts pneumonia as the result of working for several days in a factory, the floors and walls of which are damp, even though the dampness happens to have been caused by a flood which had occurred a week before he started the work.
The order of the Superior Court is reversed, and the judgment for defendant entered by the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County is affirmed.