Wheeler v. Glens Falls Insurance Company

OPINION

McCANLESS, Justice.

This is a workman’s compensation case in which the employee, Joseph G. Wheeler, sustained an injury from a fall in the course of his employment, but in which death resulted from complications arising out of chronic alcoholism. The case raises three distinct issues: whether there was material evidence to support the trial court’s judgment awarding compensation benefits to Wheeler’s widow; whether the injury was the proximate cause of the death for which plaintiff seeks compensation benefits; and whether decedent’s heavy drinking amounted to “willful misconduct”, thus…