Plastic Assembled Products, Inc. v. Benkoe

Duckett, J., by special assignment, delivered the opinion of the Court. This is a Workmen’s Compensation -case wherein the only question before the Court is whether there was sufficient evidence of some unusual condition of employment which caused or contributed to Claimant’s injury. The Claimant, Paul Benkoe, age 58, although a well educated and intelligent Hungarian engineer, speaks English with considerable difficulty. At the time of the alleged accident on June 11, 1959, Claimant had been in this country for about two and a half years.

He had been working for his employer, the Plastic Assembled Products, Inc., for approximately six weeks. His employer was engaged in manufacturing and assembling closures, such as glass and plastic medicine droppers. The Claimant, a mechanical engineer, designed and built the machines used in the production of these articles. About one-third of his work was designing and engineering and the remainder, physical mechanical work.

Appellee worked in employer’s one story structure in a large room approximately two hundred feet long, sixty feet wide and twenty-five feet high. The roof was of loose gravel over tar with no attic or air chamber. Approximately fifty employees worked in this room, forty of whom were women. Prior to this occurrence, Claimant had never had fainting spells nor had he lost consciousness while working.

The official Weather Bureau reports showed that a severely ²⁵⁸ hot spell began during this summer on June 8th and that the day of the occurrence (June 11th) was the hottest day so far that month, the maximum temperature being ninety-three degrees, or nine degrees above normal. On the morning of June 11, 1959, Claimant reported for work at the usual hour of eight o’clock. During the morning he was, performing his regular work, building a machine which he had not completed on the previous day. At about eleven a.m., while standing and presumably working at his work table, Claimant suddenly fainted and collapsed to the floor, striking his head and sustaining a severe skull injury.

He remained unconscious for a number of hours and is still unable to remember many of the circumstances and conditions surrounding the incident. In his claim for compensation, Claimant described the occurrence as follows: “I was working at a machine and became overcome by the heat. I fainted and fell over and struck my head and back and arm.” After a hearing before the Workmen’s Compensation Commission, the Commission decided that the Claimant sustained an accidental personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment. Thereafter, an appeal was duly filed by the employer and insurer, to the Superior Court of Baltimore City.

At the hearing in the Superior Court tried before a jury, Claimant testified to the effect that there was little or no ventilation in that part of the building where he was working, that the temperature outside of the building was approximately ninety degrees and at least one hundred and ten degrees inside. He further testified that there were an unusual number, between three hundred and fifty and four hundred, Bunsen burners burning during the night and that morning which emitted gas and carbon monoxide that increased the temperature where he