Mcsweeney's Case

QUA, Justice. The employee worked in a warehouse handling all kinds of freight. At the time of his alleged injury he and one Moloney were unloading bags of bicarbonate of soda or other chemical from a hand truck. Each bag weighed one hundred pounds. The two men, one at each end of a bag, would swing the bag up to its place on the pile. The employee and Moloney stopped down and had lifted a bag to swing it up onto the pile and had raised it about three feet when the employee felt a pain 'all across his stomach' such as he had never felt before, and was nauseated. He was taken to a hospital where he was operated upon the same day. He was found to have a ruptured spleen. Medical testimony was in agreement that the spleen was diseased, but was contradictory as to whether the strain of lifting the bag was a contributing cause of the rupture. Whether the strain could or did contribute to the rupture was a proper subject for medical opinion. The board found that 'the incident of lifting and swinging the hundred pound bag onto the pile was the exciting cause and aggravated a pre-existing condition, namely, a diseased spleen, to the point of causing it to rupture, resulting in the condition which disabled the employee,' and that this was an injury arising out of and in the course of the employment.