Pippin v. St. Joe Minerals Corp.

799 S.W.2d 898, 1990 Mo. App. LEXIS 1568, 1990 WL 163979
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedOctober 29, 1990
Docket16977
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 799 S.W.2d 898 (Pippin v. St. Joe Minerals Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pippin v. St. Joe Minerals Corp., 799 S.W.2d 898, 1990 Mo. App. LEXIS 1568, 1990 WL 163979 (Mo. Ct. App. 1990).

Opinions

SHRUM, Judge.

Claimant, Lorie Pippin (hereafter claimant) sought benefits under the Workers’ Compensation Law because her husband William Pippin, now deceased (hereafter employee), was found to have the occupational disease1 of silicosis.2 The silicosis diagnosis was made during an autopsy following employee’s death. Employee had worked for St. Joe Minerals Corporation (hereafter employer) from 1944 until October 1, 1965, when he retired. Following a hearing, an administrative law judge (AU) denied the claim. The AU found (a) employee had silicosis; (b) the silicosis condition contributed to causing employee’s death; (c) the silicosis condition was not discoverable until employee’s death, and the claim was, therefore, timely filed. The AU denied the claim finding that there was not sufficient proof on the issue of whether the employee was exposed to an occupational disease in the course of his employment with employer; therefore, the facts did not support a finding that the employee was exposed to the hazard of the occupational disease.

Claimant appealed and on May 3, 1990, the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission affirmed the AU’s decision3 denying compensation, adopting and incorporating the AU’s order as a part of the Commission’s decision. The issue here presented is whether the Commission’s award de[900]*900nying claimant benefits for her husband’s death because he was not exposed to the occupational disease of silicosis is supported by substantial evidence or is clearly contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence. Barr v. Vickers, Inc., supra, at 579. See also Malcom v. La-Z-Boy Midwest Chair Co., 618 S.W.2d 725, 726 (Mo.App.1981).

Employee worked for employer from 1944 until October 1, 1965.4 Employee’s daughter testified that she did not live with her parents during the years he worked for employer. She had never seen her father doing any work for employer in any of its facilities. She had toured her father’s work premises at Viburnum on a weekend, but never when it was in operation. She had seen her father return from work “a couple [of] times a year while he was working at St. Joe.” On those occasions, he usually had to wash a gray dust from his hands and face. Employee’s daughter had no idea what that dust was but when she toured the mill at Viburnum, she saw some dust there of the same type she had seen on her father. Over objection, employee’s daughter testified that her dad talked about the dust in the mill and how it got on the workers. Without objection, the daughter testified:

Q. Can you give the Court some idea of what the conditions were inside the mill regarding the dust?
A. I was only in the Viburnum mill; I wasn’t in the mill at Bonne Terre. Dad only spent a few years in Viburnum. The old mill was in Bonne Terre. There was rock to be crushed there in the crusher and some dust there.
Q. Was the dust over the entire area or just some spots with dust as best you can recall?
A. I would — it was a pretty big place. It was dusty, just say dusty.

During the autopsy by pathologist William L. Drake, Jr., M.D., microscopic examination of employee’s lungs revealed old scars of silica which represented primary5 silicosis of the lungs, limited to the upper lobe on each side. Dr. Drake’s opinion was that employee’s primary cause of death was arteriosclerotic heart disease, but a significant contributory cause of death was silicosis of both lungs with the immediate cause of death being bronchopneumonia. According to Dr. Drake, employee’s death was hastened by reason of the silicotic condition. Without objection, the pathologist testified about employee’s occupational history as follows:

Q. ... [D]id you look into the hospital records to determine what the man’s occupational history was?
A. Yes, yes. It was not a completely thorough picture, but it did say, I believe, that he worked for a mining company, and it says to quote, the admission note, “a history of exposure to rock dust when the patient worked as an electrician at St. Joe Mine.”
Q. Doctor, silicosis, is that a disease that is acutely occupational in origin?
A. Yes, sir, it is. Silicosis arises when the silica is pounded or grated into fine particles by some mechanical method, either sand blasting [sic], drilling, that sort of thing. The bedouins in the desert do not get silicosis because the sand storms have large granules that are coughed up and expectorated. But the fine dust produced by industrial methods produces a two to five micron size particle that stays in the lungs and produces damage, and that’s how silicosis is acquired by industrial exposure.

A hypothetical question was asked Dr. Drake about the causal connection between the employee's exposure to the environment at St. Joe Minerals Corporation and [901]*901his silicosis. He testified, without objection, that if the employee had no other exposure than his work for employer, then that would have to be the source. Dr. Drake could not, based upon his examination, determine how recently employee had been exposed to silica; it could have been as long ago as 1940, 1943, or 1945. The written autopsy report “Correlative Summary” read:

While the primary underlying cause of death here is arteriosclerotic heart disease with the immediate cause of death the recent myocardial infarct of the left posterior septum, important contributory causes of death were the old chronic silicosis of the lungs and the most recent early bronchopneumonia.

Dr. A.J. Steiner, board certified by the American College of Chest Physicians in pulmonary diseases, first treated employee when he was hospitalized at Missouri Baptist Hospital in July 1981 with cardiac problems. Dr. Steiner identified a copy of an admission note6 that he dictated July 12, 1981, at Missouri Baptist Hospital and the third paragraph of that medical record was read into evidence. Dr. Steiner, in response to a hypothetical question to which timely objection was made, said, “Well, within a reasonable degree of medical certainty, the exposure, the twenty some odd years to dust while employed at St. Joe Lead Company was the direct cause of his developing silicosis." Subsequently, employer’s counsel asked Dr. Steiner:

Q. With regard to the opinion that you gave earlier regarding this man’s exposure to silica, is it significant to you it was exposure of 22 years as to the duration of the exposure, significant to you in reaching your opinion?
A. Yes, to some degree it would be.
Q. Can you explain how it would be?
A. Well, a gradually developing silicosis, which is apparently what Mr. Pippin had, is usually produced by low concentration of silica in the inhaled particular exposure. In other words, a low concentration of silica over a period of time can produce changes due to silicosis which may not be easily visible on x-ray undifferentiated from other changes on x-ray such as healed granulomatous disease.

The silicotic nodules found in the upper part of employee’s lungs suggested to Dr.

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Pippin v. St. Joe Minerals Corp.
799 S.W.2d 898 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1990)

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Bluebook (online)
799 S.W.2d 898, 1990 Mo. App. LEXIS 1568, 1990 WL 163979, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pippin-v-st-joe-minerals-corp-moctapp-1990.