delivered the opinion of the court.
The question in this case is whether a knee injury suffered by Mrs. Mary J. Hosey, sometimes referred to herein as claimant, was an injury by accident arising out of and in the course of her emplоyment by Reserve Life Insurance Company, herein referred to as defendant, so as to be compensable. Code of Virginia, § 65-7, Workmen’s Compensation Act. *
The pertinent evidence, which was without contradiction, consisted of the testimony of the claimant and the reports of two doctors. The claimant, Mrs. Hosey, forty-three years old, testified, and the Commission found, that on August 5, 1965, in the course of her employment by defendant, Mrs. Hosey was making a door-to-door survey in the town of Woodstock to find out whether the peоple were interested in hospital insurance. She was going up the steps to one of the homes and when she made the final step, she said, “it was just like my knee had caught and then it just snapped just like a bone had broken in it” and she felt a sharp, severe pain. These were rock steps that she was ascending, on the corner of a street and “they were just a little bit higher than usual for a step.”
This was around 4 p.m. on a very hot day and she had nothing in her hand except some papers as she went up the steps. She did not know, she said, what caused her knee to twist or turn “because it had never happened before.” She had worked at all kinds of jobs, “and I have never had nothing like that happen at any other time.” She reported the matter that evening to defendant’s branch supervisor, who later filled out an accident report.
Mrs. Hosey was first treated by Dr? Jeanettе M. Jarman on August 8, 1965, three days after the injury, who put her to bed in a hospital and next day sent her to another hospital in Clifton Forge. Dr. Jar-man reported that claimant had severe pain in her knee, which was swollen, and that she believed the cartilage in the knee was ruptured. In a later report she described claimant’s injury as “Traumatic synovitis of the lеft knee with possible tear of medial meniscus.”
In answer to questions on a written form as to whether the “accident above referred to” was the only cause of claimаnt’s condition, Dr. Jarman replied, “Yes,” and that claimant was not suffering from any other condition “not due to this accident”.
Dr. R. P. Hawkins, Jr., to whom claimant was referred by Dr. Jarman, examined claimant in the Clifton Forge hospital on August
After about a week in the hospital, claimant madе several attempts to continue work but eventually had to give it up and an operation was performed on her knee. She was in the hospital for seven weeks on that occasion.
[1] Defendant contends, first, that claimant’s injury was not an “injury by accident” as required by Code § 65-7.
In its opinion, by Commissioner Harwood, the Commission stated: “Both Dr. Jarman and Dr. Hawkins,, in thеir reports, causally related the disabling condition to the work activity of ascending the steps in the course of the employment.” And, further, “To ascertain the mechanism оr cause of injury we look to the medical evidence, and here we find the uncontradicted opinions that the work activity was the producing cause of injury.”
Defendant contends that the record does not support these statements. While the doctors’ reports do not specifically spell out in so many words that claimant’s work activity was the producing cause of the injury, their responses to the questions asked on the forms made it very plain that such was their opinion. Both doctors stated that “the accident” was the only cause of claimant’s condition and that they found no other cause. We find nothing to require rejection of the statement in the majority opinion of the Commission that “The mechanism of injury reported by Dr. Jarman and Dr. Hawkins is medically credible.”
Both doctors, as noted, found that the claimant’s injury consisted of a traumatic synovitis of the left knee. Dr. Hawkins added that “A medial meniscus cannot be excluded.” Dr. Jarman added “with possible tear of medial meniscus.” These terms indicate that the knee injury was caused by external force.
Whether an injury is the result of an accident does not depend on whether the same injury might happen to others. We have in a number of cases defined the word “accident”. As long ago as 1927, in
Newsoms
v.
Commercial Casualty Ins., Co.,
That definition was approved in
Big Jack Overall Co.
v.
Bray,
The same definition was approved in
Hall’s Bakery
v.
Kendrick,
The same definition with the addition was used in
Derby
v.
Swift & Co.,
In
Virginia Electric, Etc., Co.
v.
Quann,
Thе evidence measured by these rules establishes that the injury suffered by the claimant resulted from an accident.
[2] Defendant admits that if there was an injury by accident it occurred in thе course of claimant’s employment, but it contends, next, that it did not “arise out of the employment.”
In
Conner
v.
Bragg,
And,, as further stated in the latter case, “the court [in Conner] in no way intended to depart from it unbroken line of holdings that a showing of causal connection is suffiсient to establish that an injury arises out of the employment.”
We said in
Southern Motor Lines
v.
Alvis,
“It is generally held that the phrase ‘arising out of’ the employment should receive a liberal construction in order to effectuate the humane and beneficent purposes of the Act. * *”
In the present case the Commission found that Mrs. Hosey was disabled “as the result of a left knee injury by accident arising out of and in the course of the employment”. This finding may not be disturbed if it be sustained by credible evidence. Code 1950, § 65-94;
Island Creek Coal Co.
v.
Fletcher,
The evidence presented was credible, was not in fact contradicted, and wаs sufficient to sustain the award. The award is therefore
Affirmed.
Notes
§ 65-7. Injury defined.—Unless the context otherwise requires, “injury” and “personal injury” mean only injury by accident, or occupational disеase as hereinafter defined, arising out of and in the course of the employment and do not include a disease in any form, except when it results naturally and unavoidably from either of the foregoing causes.