Opinion ID: 4503349
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Workers’ Compensation Law In General

Text: To obtain workers’ compensation benefits, a claimant must show that her injuries arose “out of and in the course of employment.” RSA 281-A:2, XI. The phrase “in the course of” employment, id., refers to whether the injury “occurred within the boundaries of time and space created by the terms of employment” and “occurred in the performance of an activity related to employment.” Murphy v. Town of Atkinson, 128 N.H. 641, 645 (1986). The phrase “arising out of” employment, RSA 281-A:2, XI, refers to the causal connection between a claimant’s injury and the risks of employment and requires proof that the injury “resulted from a risk created by the employment.” Id. In the instant case, there is no dispute that the claimant’s injury occurred “in the course of” her employment. Thus, this opinion focuses upon whether it also “arose out of” her employment. To determine whether an injury arises out of employment, we have recognized four types of injury-causing risks commonly faced by employees at work: “(1) risks directly associated with employment; (2) risks personal to the claimant; (3) mixed risks; and (4) neutral risks.” Appeal of Margeson, 162 N.H. at 277. The first category of risks includes “all the obvious kinds of injuries that one thinks of at once as industrial injuries,” such as falling objects, explosives, and fingers caught in gears. Id. (quotation and brackets omitted). This category of risks always “arises out of employment” for the purposes of workers’ compensation benefits. Id. The second category of risks, personal risks, includes risks that are so clearly personal that they could not possibly be attributed to employment. Id. Injuries caused solely by an employee’s “bad” knee or epilepsy fall into this category. Id. at 277-78. Injuries falling into this category are never compensable. Id. at 278. The third category of risks, mixed risks, involves a personal risk and an employment-related risk combining to produce an injury. Id. A common example is when a person with heart disease dies because of employmentrelated strain to her heart. Id. While not all injuries resulting from mixed risks are compensable, the concurrence of a personal risk does not necessarily defeat compensability if the claimant’s employment was also a substantial contributing factor to the injury. Id. 3 The fourth category of risks, neutral risks, are risks that are neither distinctly employment-related nor distinctly personal in character. Id. Neutral risks include being hit by a stray bullet, struck by lightning, or bitten by a poisonous insect. Id. They also include cases in which “the cause itself, or the character of the cause, is simply unknown,” such as in the case of an unexplained fall. Id. (quotation omitted). Neutral risks are compensable only if they meet the “increased-risk test.” Id. at 285. Under the increased-risk test, an employee may recover for an injury caused by a neutral risk if she demonstrates that her injury resulted from “a risk greater than that to which the general public is exposed.” Id. at 283 (quotation omitted). A claimant’s employment may increase a neutral risk either qualitatively or quantitatively. See id.; see also Village of Villa Park v. Compensation Com’n, 3 N.E.3d 885, 890 (Ill. App. Ct. 2013). Employment qualitatively increases a neutral risk when “some aspect of the employment contributes to the risk.” Hagan v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Com’n, No. 1-14-3745WC, 2016 WL 2962932, at  (Ill. App. Ct. May 20, 2016). Employment quantitatively increases a neutral risk when it exposes the claimant “to a common risk more frequently than the general public.” Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino v. Phillips, 240 P.3d 2, 7 (Nev. 2010) (quotation omitted). For example, in Appeal of Margeson, the neutral risk was the risk of being injured while descending a non-defective staircase. Appeal of Margeson, 162 N.H. at 276, 278. We explained that the act of descending a staircase at work did not, in and of itself, meet the increased-risk test because it “is an everyday, commonplace activity, which most people undertake on a daily basis.” Id. at 283-84. However, we concluded that an employee could meet the increased-risk test if he could show that he had to “use stairs more frequently than a member of the general public as part of his job” or that the stairs were “of an unusual height” or that the manner in which he was required to perform his job somehow increased the risk of injury. Id. at 284. The increased-risk test applies only to neutral risks. Id. at 284-85.