Title: Ex parte Johnnie L. Odom. PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS (In re: Mercy Logging, LLC v. Johnnie L. Odom) (Escambia Circuit Court: CV-09-900133; Civil Appeals : 2101061). Writ Denied. No Opinion.

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

REL: 09/14/12
Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the advance
sheets of Southern Reporter.  Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions,
Alabama Appellate Courts, 300 Dexter Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama 36104-3741 ((334)
229-0649), of any typographical or other errors, in order that corrections may be made
before the opinion is printed in Southern Reporter.
SUPREME COURT OF ALABAMA
SPECIAL TERM, 2012
_________________________
1111465
_________________________
Ex parte Johnnie L. Odom
PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI
TO THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS
(In re:  Mercy Logging, LLC
v.
Johnnie L. Odom)
(Escambia Circuit Court, CV-09-900133;
Court of Civil Appeals, 2101061)
WOODALL, Justice.
WRIT DENIED. NO OPINION.
Malone, C.J., and Bolin and Main, JJ., concur.
Murdock, J., concurs specially.
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MURDOCK, Justice (concurring specially).
I concur in denying certiorari review in this workers'
compensation case.  I do so because I find there to be no
probability of merit, see Rule 39(f), Ala. R. App. P., in the
petition of the employee, Johnnie L. Odom.  According to a
majority of the judges on the Court of Civil Appeals, Odom's
claim did not arise "out of" or "in the course of" his
employment, as required by § 25-5-51, Ala Code 1975.  See
Mercy Logging, LLC v. Odom, [Ms. 2101065, July 27, 2012] ___
So. 3d ___, ___ (Ala. Civ. App. 2012).  I write separately to
explain that the reason I see no probability of merit in this
petition is not the same as the reasons a majority of the
judges of the Court of Civil Appeals found no merit in Odom's
position.
This case involves an employee of a logging firm who was
bitten by a rattlesnake.  The incident occurred after logging
operations had ceased for the day –- but were to resume on the
same site the next morning –- and while the employee, Odom,
and two other employees were being transported in the
employer's "labor truck" to a service station where the
employees routinely parked their cars in order for the
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3
employer to pick them up and transport them to the logging
site.  According to the opinion of the Court of Civil Appeals,
the incident occurred after the labor truck had driven from
the logging site in the direction of the service station some
"two to three hundred yards" beyond a "Trucks Entering
Roadway" sign the employees had retrieved.  There was
testimony that principals and employees of the logging firm
commonly stopped to kill snakes encountered on roadways near
their logging sites because the employer and employees
considered such snakes to pose a risk to the safety of those
who would be present on the site.  On this occasion, however,
Odom was attempting to catch the rattlesnake when he was
bitten.  I refer the reader to the opinion of the Court of
Civil Appeals for additional facts.
The opinion of the Court of Civil Appeals first addresses
the "in-the-course-of" requirement of § 25-5-51.  I believe
the analysis offered by the Court of Civil Appeals' opinion
takes an unduly restrictive approach.  Under the circumstances
presented in this case, I believe the activity undertaken by
Odom was in fact undertaken "in the course of" Odom's
employment.  Compare Young v. Mutual Sav. Life Ins. Co., 541
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So. 2d 24, 26 (Ala. Civ. App. 1989) (finding that a traveling
salesman was injured "in the course of his employment,"
despite the fact that he had left his car in order to pick
blackberries on the side of the road).
In addition to the foregoing, I note that the opinion of
the Court of Civil Appeals  "question[s] whether an activity
that produces ... a speculative and remote benefit to the
employer," ___ So. 3d at ___, can satisfy the in-the-course-of
requirement.  The employer in this case, however, encourages
efforts to kill snakes in the vicinity of its logging sites.
I would steer away from characterizing the activity undertaken
here as one producing "a speculative and remote benefit,"
particularly when doing so would be at odds with the judgment
of the trial court based on evidence received ore tenus.  The
opinion of the Court of Civil Appeals finds fault with a trial
court's decision that, according to the opinion of the Court
of Civil Appeals, "assumes" that, "unless [the snake] was
caught and removed from the roadway, the same snake would
likely have been present on the job site 12 hours later when
the logging crew arrived" for the next day's work.  ___ So. 3d
at ___.
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5
In point of fact, what is at play is a judgment on the
part of the employer and employees that there was a risk that,
unless killed or removed, the particular snake might pose a
danger to employees who would be present on the job site 12
hours later when the logging crew arrived for the next day's
work.  I am unwilling to criticize the trial court's
conclusion that the removal of that risk at the time and place
it occurred was an activity that was in the course of Odom's
employment. 
Similarly, I cannot agree with the statement in the Court
of Civil Appeals' opinion that "even assuming that [the] job
site was potentially benefited as a consequence of Odom's
ridding the area of one dangerous snake, that potential
benefit appears to be outweighed by the potential detriment to
[the employer] that could (and did, in this case) result from
losing the services of a valued employee who might have been
seriously injured."  ___ So. 3d at ___.  Perhaps the employer
should not have approved of the activity, but it did so (and
it did so based on some apparent reason).  In any event, I
find inapposite and I see no authority for the imposition of
a "weighing" by a trial court or, especially, an appellate
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court of the "potential detriment" against the "potential
benefit" of some activity in order to determine whether the
activity is or is not "in the course of" employment.
Finally as to the "in-the-course-of" requirement, the
Court of Civil Appeals' opinion suggests that the activity
undertaken by Odom does not satisfy this requirement because
the dangerous element being removed from the area of the job
site "presented no imminent threat," ___ So. 3d at ___,  to an
employee.  I see no authority for the imposition of such a
standard.  Concomitantly, I do not see how the removal of a
risk to the safety of employees is any less in the course of
employment merely because that risk is one that might manifest
itself 12 hours later, rather than immediately. 
Next, I turn to the treatment by the majority of the
Court of Civil Appeals of the "arising-out-of" requirement of
§ 25-5-51.  The majority opinion of the Court of Civil Appeals
states that we should 
"focus on the occupational hazard that snakes
present to [the employer's] employees when employees
are conducting logging operations in the woods.
Odom's injury, however, did not occur while he was
conducting logging operations or while he was in the
woods." 
___ So. 3d at ___.
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As to this reasoning, I would echo what I said above in
reference to the "in-the-course-of" requirement.  The approach
adopted by the majority of the Court of Civil Appeals injects
a temporal element that should not be dispositive of the
arising-out-of requirement.  Again, whether the removal of a
safety risk occurs 12 hours in advance of when the logging
employees actually will be in the woods or only after they
have already entered the woods would not seem to make any
material difference.  Indeed, to effectively remove the risk
altogether, it would seem necessary to remove it before
employees enter the woods, not "when" the employees already
are in the woods.  
Despite my disagreements with the majority opinion of the
Court of Civil Appeals,  I nonetheless conclude that there is
no probability that Odom can demonstrate to this Court a
satisfaction of the arising-out-of requirement.  In my view,
the real reason for this is that Odom's undertaking to catch
the snake rather than simply killing it (as he could have much
more readily done), was in this case a "personal enterprise"
that prevents his employment from being the "cause" of his
injury.  That is, I see no probability under the facts that
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Odom can demonstrate to this Court that the trial court
reasonably could have found his injury to have "aris[en] out
of" his employment.  See, e.g., Young v. Mutual Sav. Life Ins.
Co., 541 So. 2d at 26-27 (disallowing workers' compensation
benefits for a claimant who left his car to pick roadside
blackberries and suffered an injury:  "The possibility of
slipping and falling into a roadside ditch is not a hazard
peculiar to traveling salesmen. Clearly the claimant, although
primarily carrying on his employer's business, i.e., he
continued on his route after the fall, had departed on his own
personal enterprise at the time of the injury.  Gumbrill v.
General Motors Corp., [216 Minn. 351, 13 N.W.2d 16 (1944)].
The injury sustained here was, thus, not causally connected
with the claimant's employment." (emphasis added)); see
generally Wooten v. Roden, 260 Ala. 606, 610, 71 So. 2d 802,
805-06 (1954) ("[T]he words 'arising out of' involve the idea
of causal relationship between the employment and the injury
....").