Lord Baltimore Hotel Co. v. Doyle

Henderson, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Bernard C. Doyle had been employed by the Lord Baltimore Hotel Company as a steam engineer for about five years prior to his death on June 21, 1947, at the age of 58. In 1943 he had undergone an operation for a gastric ulcer which left him with a post-operative, ventral hernia at the site of the four-inch abdominal incision. For a year or two following the operation there was a gradual increase in its size, after which it remained quiescent, so that he did not submit to a further operation.

He ⁵⁰⁹ was in good health and worked regularly. On June 12, 1947, while working on a ladder fixing a leak in an overhead steam line, he slipped and fell, striking his abdomen against a “sump pump” in such a way as to reactivate the old hernia. On June 13, he was advised by his Doctor that an immediate operation was necessary, because of the swelling and enlargement of the hernia, which assumed a formidable size. There was no strangulation.

That is a condition which does not occur in a hernia of the incision type. On June 21, Mr. Doyle was operated upon, but died within 25 .minutes afterwards of an acute cardiac collapse. His dependents, his widow and mother, filed claim for workmen’s compensation. The claim was disallowed by the State Industrial Accident Commission.

Upon appeal to the Baltimore City Court the case was submitted to the court, without a jury, upon an agreed statement of facts. From an order reversing the commission the employer and insurer appeal. The trial court took the position that “the dependents’ claim for compensation is not for the hernia”; that the hernia was only “an incident in the chain of events leading to his death. The pre-existing hernia is not the basis of the claim for compensation.

It is the death caused by the fall that is compensable.” It is clear that an aggravation or acceleration of a preexisting disease or infirmity, other than hernia, is ordinarily compensable under the Maryland act. Schemmel v. F. B. Gatch & Sons Contracting & Bldg. Co., 164 Md. 671 , 166 A. 39 ; Baber v. John C. Knipp & Sons, 164 Md. 55 , 163 A. 862 . Regarded as a problem in causation, it is also clear that for the purposes of the Compensation Act the death from the heart attack was a natural or logical consequence of the blow that necessitated the operation.

Compare Baltimore Towage & Lighterage Co. v. Shenton, 175 Md. 30 , 199 A. 806 . On the other hand, the claim of the surviving dependents must be measured by the same tests of liability as would have been applied to the claim of the employee himself, had he survived. Di Pietro v. Baltimore, 179 Md. 220 , 17 A. 2d 140 ; Sea ⁵¹⁰ Gull Specialty Co. v. Snyder, 151 Md. 78, 84 , 134 A. 133 . In determining liability for the death we cannot disregard the fact that the claim is based upon the aggravation or acceleration of a pre-existing hernia by the accident, and not upon the consequential death from heart attack.

The trial court relied strongly upon the case of Ross v. Smith, 169 Md. 86 , 179 A. 173 , decided May 26, 1935. The only issues in that- case were whether there was an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of employment, and whether the employee’s death was a result of such an injury. The cause of death was a strangulation of a pre-existing hernia. The court remarked that the provisions of section 36 of Art. 101, Code (1924), as amended by ch. 363, Acts of 1931, relating to apportionment of disability due in part to an accidental injury, and in part to a pre-existing disease or infirmity, were not applicable where death ensued, and that the old hernia was not the hernia for which compensation was claimed, but was a strangulated hernia which did not exist before the accident.

Although the language was not quoted, the court seems to have had in mind those provisions of section 36, as amended in 1931, which read: “In all claims for compensation for hernia, compensation may be allowed only upon definite proof to the satisfaction of the Commission * * * that the hernia did not exist prior to the injury for which compensation is claimed”. Thus it may fairly be said that the holding was that this language did not bar recovery for injury resulting in the strangulation of a pre-existing hernia. Before this decision was handed down, by Ch. 487, Acts of 1935 (approved