National Automobile & Casualty Insurance Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission

DOOLING, J. Petitioners seek to annul an award of the Industrial Accident Commission based on a finding of the commission that “William H. Honerlah, applicant, while employed as an electrician ... by Neon Maintenance Corporation, sustained injury arising out of and occurring in the course of the employment as follows: Said applicant fell and sustained an injury to his head.”

It is undisputed that the applicant while at work suffered an epileptic seizure, not induced in any way by his employment, which caused him to fall and strike his head as a result of which he sustained a fracture of the skull and cerebral concussion.

Counsel argue that matter as if the record showed and the commission had found that the applicant’s head injuries had been caused by his head striking the concrete floor of the shop without the interposition of any other agency connected with his employment. The commission made no such finding and the applicant, who was the only witness, testified as follows:

“Well, I lost consciousness and fell to the floor and hit a sawhorse and injured my head and knocked me out. . . .

“I was working at the end of the bench, and there were no close quarters; the only thing these horses were at the end of the bench which holds signs up, which we mount lights on and I evidently lost consciousness and hit the sawhorse. . . .

“Q. What part of your body struck the concrete? A. My head evidently did.”

[679]The testimony of applicant that in falling he struck the sawhorse is important because of the development of the law applicable to workmen’s compensation in the instances where the workman receives traumatic injuries as the result of a fall induced by an idiopathic seizure.

Our Supreme Court in the early history of workmen’s compensation in this state adopted the éxtreme view that a workman suffering a purely idiopathic attack which caused him to fall, even from a height where his employment took him, did not incur an injury arising out of his employment although in the fall from the height he incurred a traumatic injury. {Brooker v. Industrial Acc. Com., 176 Cal. 275 [158 P. 126, L.R.A. 1918F 878], where the workman had an epileptic fit and fell from a scaffold 39 feet above the ground, the fall causing injuries which resulted in his death.)