Van Allen v. Industrial Commission

26 Ohio N.P. (n.s.) 179
CourtMuskingum County Court of Common Pleas
DecidedJuly 1, 1925
StatusPublished

This text of 26 Ohio N.P. (n.s.) 179 (Van Allen v. Industrial Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Muskingum County Court of Common Pleas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Van Allen v. Industrial Commission, 26 Ohio N.P. (n.s.) 179 (Ohio Super. Ct. 1925).

Opinion

Eastman, J.

The facts in this case briefly stated are: Gates Van Allen was employed by the A. E. Tile Company, at Zanesville, Ohio, in T923. The company was a corporation, employing more than five men, and had complied with the law requiring insurance with the Industrial Commission [180]*180for employees. On or about July 19, 1923, he was working at the tile mill, his duties being to load a clay truck, and heave up that truck by a hand lever to its track and push it from there to the pug mill. The truck weighed about 5,000 pounds when loaded. It usually required two men to do the lifting, but sometimes one would do it without help. This Mr. Van Allen did on the morning of the day of his injury. He worked until about 9:30 a. m. At that time the employees stopped a few minutes and ate a lunch. Following the lunch he went to work again, and about 10:30 while jacking up his load of clay, he was attacked by severe pains in the stomach, and was no longer able to do his work. He said to someone nearby, “Oh, but I have the cramps.” He was unable to proceed with his work, although he insisted on trying to perform it. After finding he could not do so, he stopped and decided to go home. It took him fifteen or twenty minutes to remove his overalls. He continued to hold himself across the stomach or abdomen and complained of the pains, and said he had hurt himself. Upon arriving at home the doctor found him in such a condition that he gave him hypodermic injections to allay the pain and suffering. He continued to give him morphine to prevent suffering for about three days. His temperature was subnormal, pains intense, and about the third day he was removed to a hospital, and his abdomen opened. Upon opening, it was found that it was fqll of blood or bloody mucus, and that he was afflicted with general peritonitis. On the day he arrived at home, and while his wife was attending to some matters outside, the attendants stated that he vomited blood, and he cautioned them, not to say anything to his wife, because he did not want her to be alarmed. Shortly after the examination of his condition at the hospital he died as the result of the peritonitis. The plaintiff commenced her action with the Industrial Commission to recover therefrom the insurance amounting to $5,000 under the rules of the commission. The case was tried, and the commission denied the claim. On appeal, the transcript was certified up to the court of [181]*181common pleas and the evidence taken by the commission was silent concerning the vomiting of blood, but not as to vomiting up everything he undertook to keep in his stomach. The plaintiff knew nothing about the blood, nor about what he said to the attendants when she was out. When the case came up for trial on the appeal her attorneys had learned of the incident, and offered the proof of what was said by him, as a part of the res gestae. On a written application supported by affidavit made to the court for hearing upon further testimony, the attorneys for the commission objected, under Section 90 of Section 1465 of the General Code, claiming that no testimony could be offered except that which was taken and certified by the commission. The motion was granted and exceptions taken. There was other testimony than that concerning the res gestae to which objections were made and overruled, and to the admission of said testimony exceptions were taken. Upon admitting the testimony of physicians, and testimony of Mrs. Harris and Miss Harris concerning the vomiting of blood and the statement of Mr. Van Allen that he did not want his wife, Grace, to know of it because it would worry her, motion was made to strike it from the record, and a request to sustain the objections upon the theory that the entire record had not been exhausted, which motion was overruled in the following language:

“These statutes governing this Industrial Commission make provision for an appeal. They also make provision for petition in review, petition in error. The particular section under consideration provides that a case on appeal shall proceed under the rules of civil procedure; then in another clause provides that the testimony shall be that certified by the commission and no other evidence. Those are the words. There are two places where the section provides to follow the rules of civil procedure, and there is one place where it declares that they shall hear no other evidence. There are other places in the code covering the same provision providing that evidence should be taken, to-wit: Section 91. The appeal in Ohio in all cases except this presumes the re-hearing of a case as though it never had been heard. In a bastardy case the statute provides that the hearing shall be had on the, transcript taken [182]*182before a justice of the peace, but did any one ever hear of a case having been tried in a common pleas court on that transcript alone and to exclude or by the exclusion of all other testimony? All the testimony that is applicable to the question is continually introduced. The statute of appeals from the justice of the peace requires that the judge shall sit and try the case under the rules that would have been applied in the justice’s court, but try it originally. Whoever heard of his heing restricted to the transcript of the evidence taken before the justice of the peace! The same is true of the municipal court appeals, and every other sort of appeal that I ever heard of except this one. My candid opinion is that those words in that statute are a nullity; that they are inconsistent with all the other clauses in both the appeal and the petition in error. I do not know that there has ever been an adjudication on that particular question on this clause. I am driven to the extreme of rejecting newly discovered evidence or admitting it. Rejection holds this particular clause in this section specially applicable to every case of the kind. To admit the testimony will hold that clause a nullity.
“1 am unable to see after several hours study, because I commenced studying it this morning early, what the intention of the Legislature was. I agree with the attorney for the Industrial Commission that the commission’s view of it is that way. His view may be that way, and I would hold it that way and. ref use the testimony, if that clause were not so inconsistent with every procedure. So I admit the newly discovered testimony for whatever it may be worth to the jury. You may proceed.”

And thereupon, the court overruled the motion of defendant, to which ruling of the court counsel for defendant excepted.

When the plaintiff rested her case the following colloquy took place between the attorneys for the defendant, and the court:

Counsel for defendant: The defendant moves that all of the oral testimony be stricken from the record.

Second: Moves that the answer to the hypothetical questions asked each of the doctors on oral examination, and the hypothetical questions to Drs. Brush and Higgins also be excluded from the record and the objections made to the questions be sustained.

Third: Moves that that part of the answer of Mrs. Har[183]*183ris and Miss Harris relative to what Gates Van Allen told them or said to them be stricken from the record.

Fourth: The defendant moves the court to arrest the evidence from the jury and enter judgment in favor of the defendant.

The Court: I will hear you on everything you have in mind so I can get all the information possible.

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Bluebook (online)
26 Ohio N.P. (n.s.) 179, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/van-allen-v-industrial-commission-ohctcomplmuskin-1925.