Death by Overwork

Denver University's Law College dean was a frail, ailing man. But he was also a perfectionist, and it was with characteristic intensity that William Gordon Johnston, 54, attacked the final 48 hours of his life. He worked a full day at the university, stayed up late polishing a speech he would make the following evening. Next morning. Dean Johnston went by the campus to catch up on his paperwork, drove to Boulder for a Colorado State Bar Association meeting, stayed on for a banquet of Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity. He delivered the banquet address, at meal's end accepted the usual congratulations. Then on the night of April 25, 1958. William Johnston, who had suffered two previous heart attacks, clutched at his chest, collapsed and died.

Last week it appeared that Denver's Dean Johnston might long be remembered in the lawbooks to which he had devoted himself. Two years after his fatal heart attack, the Colorado Industrial Commission referee ruled that his death had come by overexertion while carrying out the duties of his employment, awarded Johnston's widow $11,466 in workmen's compensation. The commission itself later overruled its referee, only to be reversed, fortnight ago, by Denver District Court Judge Donald D. Bowman, who reinstated the award. Denver University, found the judge, paid Dean Johnston's fraternity dues and traveling expenses, expected him to attend Bar Association meetings. Ruled Judge Bowman: "The duties he was called upon to perform he did, not as William Gordon Johnston the individual, but as Dean Johnston of the law school. That there was unusual overexertion and stress and strain, both physical and mental, was clearly established."

The Johnston case, on its way this week to the Colorado Supreme Court, is not without precedent. New York has for some years held that physical or mental strain, resulting in a fatal heart attack, was overexertion under the workmen's compensation laws. But Judge Bowman ruled that Dean Johnston's fatal attack "constituted an accidental injury within the course and scope of his employment as dean." On that finding, the Johnston case could become a hallmark not in workmen's compensation but in the full field of life insurance. Said a worried insurance executive last week: 'If this stands up, every beneficiary of every heart-attack victim who has an accident clause and double-indemnity clause in his policy may be able to collect. This could run into untold millions of dollars.''

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