Title: State ex rel. Donohoe v. Indus. Comm'n

State: ohio

Issuer: Ohio Supreme Court

Document:

[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as 
State ex rel. Donohoe v. Indus. Comm., Slip Opinion No. 2011-Ohio-5798.] 
 
 
NOTICE 
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in 
an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports.  Readers are requested 
to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 
65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or 
other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be 
made before the opinion is published. 
 
SLIP OPINION NO. 2011-OHIO-5798 
THE STATE EX REL. DONOHOE, APPELLEE AND CROSS-APPELLANT, v. 
INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION OF OHIO, APPELLEE; KENNY HUSTON COMPANY, 
APPELLANT AND CROSS-APPELLEE. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 
may be cited as State ex rel. Donohoe v. Indus. Comm.,  
Slip Opinion No. 2011-Ohio-5798.] 
Workers’ compensation—Industrial Commission is to make reasonable inferences 
from evidence—VSSR can issue without eyewitness testimony—
Clarification needed—Judgment affirmed. 
(No. 2010-0734—Submitted August 8, 2011—Decided November 17, 2011.) 
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Franklin County, No. 08AP-201,  
2010-Ohio-1317. 
__________________ 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Patrick Donohoe died from injuries sustained in a workplace 
accident. His widow, Catherine M. Donohoe, appellee and cross-appellant, has 
filed an application for additional workers’ compensation benefits, claiming that 
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his accident resulted from his employer’s violation of specific safety requirements 
(“VSSRs”) governing the construction industry.  Appellee, Industrial Commission 
of Ohio, denied her application, but the Court of Appeals for Franklin County 
vacated the order and returned the cause to the commission for further 
consideration. State ex rel. Donohoe v. Indus. Comm., Franklin App. No. 08AP-
201, 2010-Ohio-1317, ¶ 28.  That judgment is now before us. 
{¶ 2} In 2004, decedent’s employer, The Kenny Huston Company, 
appellant and cross-appellee, was doing masonry work on a construction project 
at a military base.  In late summer, Huston employees Todd Jenkins and Burt 
Selby were assigned to lay the brick on what has been referred to as the building’s 
south parapet or south vestibule parapet wall.  This task required them to work 
from a temporary platform (“work platform”) that was about 13 feet above the 
ground. 
{¶ 3} About 13 feet behind the two men was the building’s one-story 
exterior wall that, in one spot, extended only a foot or two above the work 
platform.  Adjacent to and slightly below the outside of the exterior wall was a 
partially assembled scaffold that did not have guardrails on the sides of the 
platforms.  The scaffold, which was apparently being dismantled, was not 
considered part of the south parapet work area. 
{¶ 4} On August 30, 2004, decedent was assisting Selby and Jenkins.  As 
a laborer, his main task was to keep the two masons supplied with brick, mortar, 
and other necessary materials.  Supplies began to run low by mid-afternoon, 
prompting repeated calls for decedent, but he did not respond.  Finally looking to 
find him, the men peered over the exterior wall and saw decedent lying on the 
ground.  He had obviously fallen, had lost his hardhat during the descent, and had 
struck his head on either a concrete footer or the ground surrounding it.  Decedent 
died later from those injuries. 
January Term, 2011 
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{¶ 5} After a workers’ compensation death claim was allowed, his 
widow filed her VSSR application with the commission, alleging that her 
husband’s accident had occurred because Huston had not complied with 
numerous specific safety requirements pertaining both to scaffolding particularly, 
and more generally, to work done at a specified height above the ground.  The 
parties could agree that decedent had fallen from the scaffold.  They disagreed on 
how far he had fallen and whether he had fallen a short distance from the 
scaffold’s cross-braces or from one of its high unguarded platforms. 
{¶ 6} There was evidence postulating that decedent had fallen from a 
height of 12 feet or more, which could encompass either the scaffold’s cross-
braces or one of its platforms.  Other evidence indicated that a fall from a height 
as low as one to three feet could have caused the fatal head trauma if decedent’s 
head had struck the concrete footer.  This second scenario, however, would rule 
out the possibility that decedent had fallen from one of the unguarded scaffold 
platforms, which were located higher up on the structure. It would also render 
inapplicable those specific safety requirements governing work at heights. 
{¶ 7} At a hearing before a commission staff hearing officer (“SHO”), 
Huston argued that decedent may have sustained his injuries in a short-distance 
fall from the scaffold’s cross-braces. In addition to negating the applicability of 
many of the specific safety requirements the widow cited, Huston also argued that 
decedent’s presence on the cross-braces constituted unilateral negligence and 
would bar any VSSR finding.  The widow, on the other hand, continued to assert 
that her husband had fallen a much greater distance. She also argued that even if 
he had fallen from the cross-braces, he was on them only because Huston had 
provided no other way to reach the mason’s work platform.  According to the 
widow, Huston could not successfully assert a unilateral employee-negligence 
defense because Huston had failed to first comply with a safety regulation 
requiring safe access to scaffolds. 
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{¶ 8} Huston prevailed.  The staff hearing officer wrote: 
{¶ 9} “In the present case the decedent fell and hit his head, thereby 
causing his death.  The facts indicate that no one saw the decedent fall, no one has 
knowledge where he was when he fell ie. [sic], did he fall from the scaffold or did 
he fall climbing up/down  the scaffold. Furthermore, no one knows why he was 
where he was at the time of his fall.  * * * Consequently, the decedent-widow can 
not prove by a preponderance of the evidence that there was a violation of a 
specific safety requirement, if there was a violation, which section was violated 
and whether that violation caused the decedent’s death.  As such, the instant 
application for a violation of the specific safety requirement is denied. 
{¶ 10} “All evidence was reviewed and considered.” (Emphasis added.) 
{¶ 11} Rehearing was denied. 
{¶ 12} Donohoe’s widow filed a complaint in mandamus in the Court of 
Appeals for Franklin County, alleging that the commission had abused its 
discretion in denying her application.  She argued that the commission had denied 
her application solely because there were no eyewitnesses that could definitively 
identify the point from which her husband fell.  She argued that a lack of 
eyewitnesses should not defeat her claim and asserted that the hearing officer was 
required to draw inferences from the evidence presented and essentially pick one 
side’s version of the accident.  That the staff hearing officer did not, according to 
the widow, could mean only that the hearing officer did not review the evidence. 
{¶ 13} The court of appeals agreed: 
{¶ 14} “[W]e believe the tenor of the SHO’s order is that relator was 
incapable of proving her VSSR claim in the absence of eyewitness testimony.  
Clearly, the case law does not support such a requirement. * * * 
{¶ 15} “Rather than agreeing with the magistrate’s finding that the 
commission considered the reports and found them to be unreliable, we believe 
the commission did not consider the reports at all in the absence of supporting 
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eyewitness testimony.  By reciting the uncertainty surrounding decedent’s fall 
based upon the absence of witnesses, the commission suggests that there was no 
evidence supporting relator’s claim.  Indeed, it held that relator ‘can not’ prove 
her VSSR claim.”  Donohoe, 2010-Ohio-1317, ¶ 23-24. 
{¶ 16} The court issued a limited writ that vacated the order and returned 
the cause to the commission for further consideration and an amended order. 
Donohoe, 2010-Ohio-1317, ¶ 28.  Both the widow and Huston now appeal to this 
court as of right. 
{¶ 17} The difficulty in this case, as the court of appeals accurately 
observed, is that the staff hearing officer’s order—from an evidentiary 
standpoint—can be interpreted in different ways. Donohoe at ¶ 21.  The order 
contained the boilerplate “all evidence was reviewed and considered,” leading the 
appellate magistrate to assume that the staff hearing officer had indeed evaluated 
the evidence and was not persuaded by the widow’s version of events. Id. at ¶ 22, 
45.  The court of appeals acknowledged that language, but found that other 
language in the order cast doubt on the true extent of evidentiary review. Id. at 
¶ 26. 
{¶ 18} The court based its conclusion on two things: (1) the staff hearing 
officer’s preoccupation with the lack of eyewitnesses to the fall and (2) her 
declaration that the widow “can not” prove her case.  To the court of appeals, the 
singular focus on eyewitness testimony could be explained only by the staff 
hearing officer’s mistaken belief that such evidence was legally required to prove 
a VSSR. Id. at ¶ 24.  Only the belief in such a per se rule, the court continued, 
would justify the staff hearing officer’s conclusion that the widow “can not”—as 
opposed to “did not”—carry her burden of proof. Id.  If the staff hearing officer 
had so believed, then she would have had no reason to review the rest of the 
evidence. Id. at ¶ 25. 
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{¶ 19} An order that can engender two viable, yet irreconcilable, 
interpretations is too ambiguous to withstand scrutiny, and one that is potentially 
based on an erroneous belief that a VSSR cannot issue in the absence of 
eyewitnesses is clearly an abuse of discretion.  See, e.g. State ex rel. Supreme 
Bumpers, Inc. v. Indus. Comm., 98 Ohio St.3d 134, 2002-Ohio-7089, 781 N.E.2d 
170, ¶ 69. (The court “has never required direct evidence of a VSSR.  To the 
contrary, in determining the merits of a VSSR claim, the commission or its SHO 
* * * may draw reasonable inferences and rely on his or her own common sense 
in evaluating the evidence”).  The court of appeals was therefore correct in 
returning the cause to the commission for clarification and consideration of all the 
evidence if the staff hearing officer did not do so previously. 
{¶ 20} The judgment of the court of appeals is affirmed. 
Judgment affirmed. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and PFEIFER, LUNDBERG STRATTON, O’DONNELL, 
LANZINGER, CUPP, and MCGEE BROWN, JJ., concur. 
__________________ 
Reminger Co., L.P.A., Patrick Kasson, Mick L. Proxmire, and Melvin J. 
Davis, for appellee and cross-appellant. 
Buckley King, L.P.A., and Christopher L. Lardiere, for appellant and 
cross-appellee. 
Michael DeWine, Attorney General, and Stephen D. Plymale, Assistant 
Attorney General, for appellee. 
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