Anna Lue Mckamey v. Red Kap Industries

This workers' compensation appeal has been referred to the Special Workers' Compensation Appeals Panel of the Supreme Court in accordance with TENN. CODE ANN. _ 5-6-225(e)(3) for hearing and reporting to the Supreme Court of findings of fact and conclusions of law. The appellant suffered a stroke while working on an assembly line. Substantial disability resulted, which she alleges is compensable as being accident- related. The trial judge disagreed, and she appeals. Our review is de novo, with the presumption that the judgment is correct unless the evidence otherwise preponderates. TENN. CODE ANN. _ 5-6-225(e)(2). Mrs. McKamey is 49 years old, with limited skills and education. Her assembly-line job involved the sewing of shirt collar stays, which may be fairly described as repetitive and monotonous. On May 12, 1992, while working the 7: a.m. to 3:3 p.m. shift, she suffered a stroke shortly before the end of her shift which resulted in total vocational disability. She alleges that, like all other employees, she was expected to make production, with its attendant pressures and tensions, which caused or contributed to the stroke. Causation is the dispositive issue. The proof revealed that Mrs. McKamey had been suffering from hypertension for years and had been regularly taking medication for that disease since 1988. She had smoked cigarettes since age 14; at the time of her stroke, she smoked more than twenty per day. Responding to a hypothetical question, Dr. John Purvis, a neurosurgeon, testified that the sewing of hundreds of collar stays during a regular shift could be a contributory factor to the cerebral accident, depending upon a resolution of certain factors, those being arteriosclerosis and hypertension, the former being aggravated or caused by smoking which "played a part" and contributed to her pre-existing condition. The inducing causes of her stroke was the rupture of a blood vessel. After reviewing a videotape of the assembly-line workers, Dr. Purvis testified as -2-