Anton v. Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co.

Citations

• 92 Wash. 305
• 159 P. 115
• 1916 Wash. LEXIS 754

Syllabus

<p>Damages — Personal Injuries — Proximate Cause — Resulting Disease — Evidence—Opinion Evidence — Sufficiency. A recovery for tuberculosis of the shoulder joint, developed in seven months as the result of a trifling fall by a section hand while engaged in removing ties, depends upon speculation and conjecture, and cannot be sustained upon a physician’s answer to a hypothetical question to the effect that such an injury is likely to induce or incite tuberculosis by reducing the natural resistance of the patient at the point of the bruise, from which the witness gave it as his opinion that the injury was the determining cause, where it was the established fact that tuberculosis was the unusual rather than the usual thing and very unusual in the shoulder joint, since the injury was not the natural and probable consequence of the fall; especially where a specialist testified that it would take fourteen to twenty-four months to develop the condition in which defendant was found seven months after the injury.</p>