Brady v. Royal Manufacturing Co.

Eberhardt, Judge.

We cannot find any basis for holding that claimant suffered an “injury” resulting from “accident,” as required by the Act, and we affirm.

While the result may not have been intended or expected, the occurrence out of which her condition arose, or out of which she asserts that it arose, was in no way accidental. She was called in to the office for the discussion; the discussion proceeded between her and her superior in an apparently normal manner; and until that had ended nothing untoward happened. There is testimony which would authorize a finding (and we must accept it, since the board found against the claim) that she actually returned to her work for some time after the interview had closed. Nothing happened to her on the job itself; she does not contend that it did.

The medical evidence does not indicate that she actually suffers from a paralyzed arm; on the contrary it indicates that she merely thinks it to be paralyzed and will not use or attempt to use it. It is a state of mind. The doctors find no physical evidence of or reason for the paralysis which she thinks exists. This may and probably does indicate that what claimant suffers from is some type of mental illness. While mental illness is as real as pneumonia, like pneumonia it is an illness. It is not an “injury” by “accident.” See Industrial Commission v. O’Malley, 124 Ohio St. 401 (178 NE 842) (watchman suffering from high blood pressure became excited when police came up to inform him that a door had been left open, soon thereafter became ill and died of acute pulmonary edema); Schuster v. Perryman Elec. Co., 11 N. J. M. 16 (163 A 437) (cashier losing voice from fright when bandits held up and robbed place); Voss v. Prudential Ins. Co., 14 N. J. M. 791 (187 A 334) (stenographer suffering nervous breakdown when called an “idiot” by fellow worker), in none of which could the resulting condition be attributed to an “accident.”

There are some cases from other jurisdictions coming to the contrary conclusion, the principal one relied upon by claimant being Charon’s¹ Case, 321 Mass. 694 (75 NE2d 511), but it must be observed that the Massachusetts Act does not require that the injury result from accident.

The board has found that claimant did not suffer an injury by accident. That is a finding involving factual issues, and we should not disturb it. To do so we must conclude as a matter of law that she did suffer an injury by accident. That we cannot do. Montgomery v. Maryland Cas. Co., 169 Ga. 746 (1) (151 SE 363); Maryland Cas. Co. v. Sanders, 182 Ga. 594 (186 SE 693); Payton v. Fidelity & Cas. Co., 47 Ga. App. 747 (171 SE 392).

Judgment affirmed.

Bell, P. J., Jordan, P. J., Hall, Pannell, Deen, Quillian and Whitman, JJ., concur. Felton, C. J., dissents.

1 Not.to be confused with the Charon who ferried souls of the departed across the river Styx to the nether world.