Opinion ID: 1537228
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Arise out of employment

Text: The requirement that an injury arise out of employment refer[s] to the origin or cause of the injury. Kolson, 699 A.2d at 361 (internal quotation marks omitted). [A]ll risks causing injury to a claimant can be brought within three categories: risks distinctly associated with the employment, risks personal to the claimant, and `neutral' risks- i.e., risks having no particular employment or personal character. Harms from the first are universally compensable. Those from the second are universally noncompensable. Ford, 971 A.2d at 920 n. 10. To determine whether harm from an injury caused by a neutral risk arises out of one's employment, this court has adopted the positional-risk test. Id. at 916. Under the positional-risk test, an injury arises out of employment so long as it would not have happened but for the fact that conditions and obligations of the employment placed claimant in a position where he was injured. Clark v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Servs., 743 A.2d 722, 727 (D.C.2000). As described above, Bentt I remanded the case to the agency to allow it to determine in the first instance whether the injections that allegedly harmed Bentt arose out of and in the course of Bentt's employment. Bentt I, 830 A.2d at 872. The ALJ carried out this directive and found that there was no work-related event, activity, or requirement in the regular performance of [Bentt's] employment that would have exposed her to receiving nerve block injections. The ALJ found nothing in the record that allows for the conclusion that by walking rounds [Bentt] was exposed to the potential of receiving nerve block injections or the resulting complications she had from those injections. Put differently, it was not the conditions and obligations of the employment, Clark, 743 A.2d at 727, but rather circumstances personal to Bentt that placed Bentt in the position where she was hurt. Under established principles of review, the Board was required to uphold that determination unless it was not supported by substantial evidence or was in conflict with applicable law. Marriott Int'l, 834 A.2d at 885-86. The ALJ's factual assessment was indisputably correct, and the Board did not attempt to undermine it. The ALJ's legal analysis, in turn, was consistent with our case law discussing the arising out of element, beginning with Grayson v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Servs., 516 A.2d 909 (D.C. 1986). In that case, Grayson, a busdriver with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, sought workers' compensation for an injury she received while pulling out of a parking space during her lunch break. Id. at 910. The Director of DOES denied Grayson's request because in no sense could it be said that the conditions of [Grayson's] employment as a busdriver exposed her to the dangers attendant the personal use of her automobile during her lunch break. Id. at 912-13. This court affirmed. Id. at 913. Similarly, although in some crude sense the injections had a but-for relationship with Bentt's employment, the injections did not arise out of Bentt's employment for purposes of the Act because, as the ALJ found, the conditions of Bentt's employment did not expose Bentt to the dangers of a maladministered injection. See id.; cf. Washington Hosp. Ctr. v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Servs., 821 A.2d 898, 900 (D.C.2003) (affirming disability award to employee who was injured resulting from a pre-employment inoculation obtained as a condition of employment ) (emphasis added). Because the ALJ's first Compensation Order on Remand was supported by substantial evidence and consistent with applicable law, the Board exceeded [its] permissible scope of review by reversing that Order. Marriott Int'l, 834 A.2d at 887. It is true that in Bentt I, we stated that the record before us at the time could have supported a finding that Bentt's injury arose out of and in the course of her employment. Bentt I, 830 A.2d at 872. We appreciate that the Board might have felt that this statement left the agency no discretion to reach a contrary conclusion, but that reading of Bentt I is wrong. If our intent in Bentt I was to conclusively determine the question, we would have reversed, not remanded. Further proceedings after the Board's erroneous reversal of the ALJ's first Compensation Order on Remand do not alter our analysis. In the Second Compensation Order on Remand, feeling his hands tied by the Board, the ALJ ruled that the offer of Dr. Buzzanell to give [Bentt] the injections arose directly from her limping and obvious discomfort as she performed her work. We do not dispute this finding, but hold that legally it is insufficient to satisfy the arising out of element because, as the ALJ wrote in the first Compensation Order on Remand, the conditions and obligations of Bentt's employment had nothing to do with Bentt's receiving the injections. See Grayson, 516 A.2d at 912-13. Attempting somehow to tie the injections to Bentt's job, the Board opined after Bentt appealed the Second Compensation Order on Remand that the injections were presumably given at least in part to help Bentt perform her duties. (Emphasis added.) But the Board cited nothing in support of this supposition, with respect to either the first or the second injection, and indeed, there was no such evidence in the record before the ALJ. Although Buzzanell testified that he had seen Bentt having difficulty walking on rounds, there is no evidence that when he administered the first injection, Bentt, Buzzanell, or anyone else thought that Bentt's limp was impairing her performance of her job, whether by causing her to take extra breaks, increasing the time it took for her to achieve her tasks, or otherwise. We are not saying that the record precluded the ALJ from finding that Buzzanell intended to help Bentt perform her job, but that is not the finding that the ALJ made. And because the ALJ's initial finding on remand was supported by substantial evidence and not foreclosed by Bentt I, the Board was not permitted to substitute [its] judgment for that of the [ALJ]. Marriott Int'l, 834 A.2d at 885. We also note that Buzzanell's testimony played no role in the Board's analysis either, as made clear by the fact that the Board ordered the ALJ to find that the injections arose out of Bentt's employment before the Board had seen Buzzanell's deposition. That the Board did not cite Buzzanell's testimony in the Order that is now on review further demonstrates that the Board's decision was the product of legal error  i.e., overreading Bentt I  rather than a factual analysis to which we must defer. What is more, the tie between the second injection and Bentt's work was even more tenuous than the link between Bentt's job and the first injection. Buzzanell testified that he gave Bentt the second injection to make her more comfortable at a wedding she planned to attend on her own time. To be sure, Bentt denied that the second injection was for that purpose, but neither did she say that she asked for the injection to help her perform her job. In sum, we hold that the Board's latest conclusion that the injections arose out of Bentt's employment must be reversed because it rests on a misunderstanding of the law (the erroneous belief that the remand in Bentt I had the effect of reversal) and is not supported by substantial evidence (but instead by the unsupported speculation that the injections were given with the goal of helping Bentt perform her job). Our review persuades us that, as the ALJ found in the first Compensation Order on Remand, the conditions and obligations, Grayson, 516 A.2d at 911, of Bentt's employment did not place Bentt in the position where she was harmed; Bentt's injury arose out of a personal, and therefore non-compensable, risk. See Ford, 971 A.2d at 920 n. 10. [2]