Kelly-Springfield Tire Co. v. Daniels

Delaplaine, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is a proceeding under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, Code Supp. 1947, art. 101, sec. 1 et. seq., brought by Louis E. Daniels, age 49, to recover compensation for an injury which he sustained on March 17, 1950, while working at the plant of the Kelly-Springfield Tire Company in Cumberland. Claimant was lifting an air bag and putting it on the hook of the machine for bagging tires. The base of the machine was about one foot above the floor, and in order to attach the bag to the hook it was necessary to stoop and reach between two discs under the machine.

While claimant was stooping, he felt sharp pain, “just like a knife,” in the lower part of his back. He straightened up and tried to lift another bag, and the pain returned. At the hearing before the State Industrial Accident Commission he testified: “I went to First Aid and they taped me, and I came back, and they put me on light duty, where I could sit down. I worked at that for an hour or so and the pain got so great I couldn’t stand it, and I went home.” Claimant returned to work at the tire plant on May 22, but he had to stop again on June 14.

Finally he consulted Dr. Wylie M. Faw, Jr., a Cumberland surgeon. Dr. Faw diagnosed his disability as instability of the lumbar-sacral spine with prolapsed intervertebral disc between the fifth lumbar and first sacral vertebrae, with pressure on the left first sacral nerve. On July 6 claimant entered a hospital and underwent an operation on the left lamina of the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae. As the prolapsed disc was causing pressure on the fifth lumbar and first sacral nerves, the lamina was removed to relieve the pressure.

Claimant was discharged from the hospital on July 19. Although he was weak and nervous and still wearing a brace, he returned to work on September 5. ¹⁵⁹ On September 27, 1950, the Industrial Accident Commission, deciding that claimant had sustained an accidental injury, awarded him compensation for temporary total disability at the rate of $28 per week, beginning March 21, 1950, and ending September 4, 1950, subject to a credit for the days on which he worked and earned wages. It also ordered the employer and Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, its insurer, to pay the medical expenses incurred as a result of the injury. The employer and the insurer appealed from the award to the Circuit Court for Allegany County.

The case was submitted to the Court without a jury. From the order of the Court affirming the award, the employer and the insurer appealed here. In several States the Workmen’s Compensation Act provides for compensation for injuries without qualifying them as accidental. Under these Acts compensability depends upon the question whether the injury arose out of and in the course of the employment.

The Maryland Act, like the Acts in nearly all other States, provides for compensation for disability or death of an employee resulting from “an accidental personal injury sustained by the employee arising out of and in the course of his employment.” Code Supp. 1947, art. 101, sec. 14. The Act defines the term “accidental personal injury” as including only “injuries arising out of and in the course of employment and such occupational disease or infection as may naturally result therefrom * * Code Supp. 1947, art. 101, sec. 67, as amended by Laws 1951, ch. 289. It has been held by the great weight of authority that sudden and unexpected rupture of some portion of the internal structure of the body, as cerebral hemorrhage or apoplexy, or the failure of some essential function of the body, as heart failure or paralysis, brought about by the exertion of the employee while engaged in the performance of his duties, or by the conditions of the employment, even without any external happening of an accidental nature, is an accidental injury. Gray’s ¹⁶⁰ Hatchery & Poultry Farms v. Stevens, Del.

Super., 81 A. 2d 322 ; 58 Am. Jur., Workmen’s Compensation, sec. 255; 5 Schneider, Workmen’s Compensation, Perm. Ed., sec. 1446. Thus it has been specifically held .by the Supreme Court of Vermont that an injury sustained by an employee while doing lifting of an ordinary character in an ordinary manner is an accidental injury within the purview of the Workmen’s Compensation Act.

Giguere v. E. B. & A. C. Whiting Co., 107 Vt. 151 , 177 A. 313 , 98 A. L. R. 196. Likewise it has been held in Rhode Island in Chirico v. Kappler, 61 R. I. 128, 200 A. 447 , that an employee who received a lumbar-sacral strain while lifting a heavy stone into a truck sustained a personal injury by accident entitling him to compensation. Explaining that the Workmen’s Compensation Act is a remedial statute which should be liberally construed, the Court ruled that where causal connection is shown between the employment and an unexpected mishap to the employee in the course of his employment, injury resulting from the mishap is an accident within the contemplation of the Act. It has similarly been held in New Jersey that any injury resulting from strain of an employee incident to his work, whether usual or unusual, constitutes a compensable accident.

Ciocca v. National Sugar Refining Co., 124 N. J. L. 329, 12 A. 2d 130, 132 ; Cavanaugh v. Murphy Varnish Co., 130 N. J. L. 107, 31 A. 2d 759 , Id., 131 N. J. L. 163, 35 A. 2d 896 . In Neylon