Morris v. Industrial Accident Commission

WOOD, Acting P. J. While petitioner was employed in January or February, 1935, as an assistant matron in a hospital operated by the County of Los Angeles she was bitten on the right breast by an epileptic patient. She was attended by Dr. Margaret Godfrey, who was then the resident physician at the institution. Petitioner lost no time from her work because of the injury. She retired from her work on December 1, 1938, not through disability, and has been paid retirement pension since that date by the County of Los Angeles. In May, 1939, she noticed a lump on the breast which had been injured, and in August, 1939, her physician, John S. Simms, diagnosed her condition as cancer. She thereafter applied to the Industrial Accident Commission for an award, claiming that the cancerous condition of her breast had been caused by the injury she received in 1935 when she was bitten by the patient. The Commission filed findings that: “The malignancy of the right breast, of which applicant complains, and which forms the subject matter of this proceeding, was neither caused nor aggravated by said injury”. Petitioner now seeks to annul the award, claiming that this finding is not supported by the evidence.

The evidence most favorable to petitioner is found in the statement of her physician, Dr. Simms, in which he says: “While the etiology of carcinoma is unknown, yet many authorities believe that a single trauma to the breast is a definite predisposing factor. Since this lesion developed at the site of the injury, I believe that this opinion applies to her case. . . . From our limited knowledge of the etiology of cancer I cannot state that the previous trauma was not a factor in its production”. Dr. Godfrey wrote a letter from Australia, dated September 12, 1939, in which she stated: “I understand that she has developed a cancer of the right breast, and as any injury definitely predisposes to this condition this injury might well be the cause”. Dt. W. H. Boyd, under date of November 18, 1939, made this statement: “Examination of Mrs. Lucy C. Morris on this date gives no indication of the cause of the formation of the carcinoma of the right breast which she says was removed. As to the probable cause of this growth I believe that our present knowledge [96]of the cause of carcinoma is at present so limited that we can not rule out trauma as a possible factor in its formation. The history of a trauma such as the patient gives is sufficient to have caused damage to the breast tissue and I am therefore inclined to believe that the trauma may have played a part in the formation of the carcinoma.” The employer’s physician Dr. C. K. Emery, under date of October 17, 1939, stated: "There was no indication that the cancer of the breast had any direct connection with the injury received in 1935. The coincidence of an injury followed by cancer is striking but an inconclusive event in the causation of a cancer, where many factors are probably involved. In the present case I am unable to say that the circumstances relating to the injury have any direct bearing on the subsequent development of the cancer”.