Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Wright

144 S.W.2d 626
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedOctober 11, 1940
DocketNo. 2047
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 144 S.W.2d 626 (Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Wright) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Wright, 144 S.W.2d 626 (Tex. Ct. App. 1940).

Opinion

GRISSOM, Justice.

This is a workman’s compensation case in which the plaintiff, A. N. Wright, recovered judgment against the defendant, Traders & General Insurance Company, for $4,243.84. The defendant has appealed. The parties will be referred to as they appeared in the trial court. This is the second appeal of this case. See, Tex.Civ.App., [627]*62795 S.W.2d 753, affirmed 132 Tex. 172, 123 S.W.2d 314.

Defendant’s main contention is that the judgment should be reversed and judgment rendered for it because the trial court erred in overruling its motion for an instructed verdict, in that (it contends) the evidence shows conclusively that (1) plaintiff’s tubercular condition is the cause of his incapacity; (2) that tuberculosis was active prior to the time plaintiff was injured by inhaling gas, and (3) because there is no proof that plaintiff’s tubercular condition was the natural result, without the intervention of a new and independent agency or disease, of inhalation of gas. Relative thereto the jury found (1) that Wright sustained “personal accidental injuries” November 21, 1933; (2) that said injuries were sustained in the course of his employment with Storey, Friebele and Duf-fey; (4) that Wright was totally incapacitated for work as a result of the injuries received November 21, 1933; (5) that such total disability developed November 27, 1933; (6) that such total disability is not permanent; (7) that plaintiff’s total incapacity continued for 104 weeks; (8) that said injury of November 21, 1933 resulted in plaintiff’s partial incapacity; (9) that plaintiff’s partial incapacity began November 27, 1935; (11) and continued for 89 weeks; (16) that Wright did not have tuberculosis prior to November 21, 1933; (20) that tuberculosis was not the sole producing cause of plaintiff’s incapacity.

We think it is not conclusively shown, as contended by defendant, that tuberculosis is the sole cause of plaintiff’s incapacity nor that plaintiff had an “active” case of tuberculosis when he inhaled gas on November 21, 1933, and we believe the evidence is sufficient to authorize a finding that tuberculosis is the natural result of the injury to his lungs. We think the evidence is sufficient to authorize a finding that on November 21, 1933, while cleaning out an oil tank he inhaled poisonous gas under such circumstances as to constitute an accidental injury within the meaning of Article 8309, Vernon’s Ann.Civ.St., and that the inhalation of the gas so injured his lungs that as a result thereof he thereafter contracted in succession, pneumonia and tuberculosis, and that the injury was a contributing cause of his incapacity. We think there is no conclusive evidence of the intervention of a new and independent agency or disease which produced his incapacity.

Defendant contends that it is undisputed that plaintiff’s incapacity is the result of a tubercular condition which existed prior to the inhalation of gas, and that, therefore, the incapacity could not be the result of inhaling gas. To support this contention it points to the allegation in plaintiff’s petition that by reason of the gas entering Wright’s lungs a “latent and dormant tubercular bacilli was made active and as a natural result thereof tuberculosis developed.” Such allegation is found in an alternative plea. In a prior portion of plaintiff’s pleadings he had alleged that the gas burned and irritated his lungs and that' as a result thereof tuberculosis developed. We think such alternative allegation does not constitute an admission that plaintiff had tuberculosis prior to the inhalation of gas. Rotsky v. Kelsay Lumber Co., 118 Tex. 180, 188, 12 S.W.2d 973.

Defendant points to. the testimony of a certain doctor as conclusive evidence of prior tuberculosis. From this testimony the jury might have found plaintiff was suffering from tuberculosis at the time he inhaled gas, but that was a matter in dispute which the jury has determined adversely to defendant. There was evidence that for fifteen years prior to the inhalation of gas plaintiff was able to and did perform hard manual labor without trouble, that after he was gassed he was not able to do so, etc. There was also the testimony of his doctor, contrary, in effect, to that of defendant’s doctor that the condition of plaintiff’s lungs definitely indicated tuberculosis following the inhalation of gas.' Defendant stresses testimony' that tuberculosis is a germ 'disease and that, as a scientific proposition, tuberculosis' cannot be taken from the gas itself. We think the evidence is sufficient to justify the conclusion that pneumonia and tuberculosis resulted from the injury to plaintiff’s lungs; that pneumonia was not an independent intervening agency or disease which broke the chain of causation between the injury and the tubercular condition, but that pneumonia and tuberculosis were each a naturally resulting link in the chain of causation set in force by the inhalation of gas which irritated and inflamed plaintiff’s lungs. Order of Railway Conductors v. Gregory, Tex.Civ.App., 91 S.W.2d 1139, 1142.

We think the decision in Texas Employers’ Ins. Ass’n v. Burnett, Tex.Com.App., 105 S.W.2d 200, 201, and the other decisions relied upon by defendant, may be properly differentiated and distinguished [628]*628from the present case upon the facts! The question decided in the Burnett case, as stated by Judge German, was: “Do the beneficiaries of a deceased employee have a right to recover compensation for death of the employee when the death is due directly to an independent intervening agency, having no connection with or relation to the original injury, although the injury may have to some extent reduced the power of resistence of the deceased, and in that manner contributed in some degree to his death?” He answered the question as follows :

“We think the question is answered by our statute. Compensation for either disability or death must have for its foundation an ‘injury’ received by an employee in the course of employment. Our compensation law has defined ‘injury’ in this language: ‘The terms “injury” or “personal injury” shall be construed to mean damage or harm to the physical structure of the body and such diseases or infection as naturally result therefrom.’ (Rev.St.1925, art. 8309, § 1.)

“It is thus seen that diseases which naturally result from an injury are themselves classed as an injury, and if an employee be incapacitated thereby, or if he die therefrom, compensation is allowed. On the other hand, it was held in the case of Buchanan v. Maryland Cas. Co., 116 Tex. 201, 288 S.W. 116, that death by typhoid fever contracted by an employee as the result of impure water or food furnished by an employer is not compensable. It is pointed out, as was done in the case of Texas Employers’ Insurance Ass’n v. Jackson (Tex.Com.App.) 265 S.W. 1027, that a disease which does not ensue by reason of an injury inflicted upon the body, that is, by ‘damage or harm to the physical structure of the body,’ is not compensable. It follows, therefore, that death by disease not naturally caused by the injury, but intervening as an independent agency, is not compensable. To be compensable, the death must result from the physical injury or from disease or infection which naturally results from the injury. If there be no such disease or infection, as in the present instance,

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144 S.W.2d 626, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/traders-general-ins-co-v-wright-texapp-1940.