Opinion ID: 1242540
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: work-related factors versus purely personal motivations for sexual assault

Text: ¶ 23 Larson defines a compensable risk to include a work-related dispute leading to an assault, as distinguished from a dispute of a purely personal nature between the attacker and the victim. This approach is codified in 85 O.S.Supp.1997 § 3(10)(a), which defines an accidental injury as one having as [its] source a risk not purely personal but one that is causally connected with the conditions of employment.... ¶ 24 Similar personal-risk analysis has formed the basis of court opinions from several jurisdictions. In Hershey v. Ninety-Five Associates, [38] the Pennsylvania court held that an employee who sought to forego compensation liability by opting to press a tort action for sexual assault must prove that her injury was not connected to the employee status and that her attacker did harbor personal animosity. While Hershey represents the converse scenario to that in the case at bar, the pronouncement correctly analyzes the contrast between employment risks and those which have a source in personal motives. ¶ 25 Hershey follows another Pennsylvania decision  Brooks v. Marriott Corp. [39] There a waitress was attacked and killed while on the job. The girl's parents sought damages from the employer. They argued that exclusivity of the compensation remedy did not bar a tort claim because the harmful act was aimed at the decedent waitress herself  rather than at her qua employee. The critical issue for the court to decide was whether the attacker was unknown to the victim. The court found she was killed as an employee, not as a victim of the killer's personal animosity or passion. ¶ 26 The important relevance of these Pennsylvania cases is that they rest on the provisions of Title 77, § 411(1) Pennsylvania Statutes, which exempt from the state's compensation liability any harm intended to injure the employee because of reasons personal to him, and not directed against him as an employee or because of his employment. As in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania law excludes from the act any harm inflicted out of the attacker's purely personal motives. The critical difference between Oklahoma and Pennsylvania is that in this state the burden of proving all elements of the claim is cast on the claimant, while Pennsylvania seemingly presumes an attack to be compensable unless shown to arise from personal motivations. ¶ 27 The record in this case shows no more than the assailant's personal libido-driven motivation. He had been making advances at the claimant for a period of more than one year before the rape. His sexual passion was directed at the claimant's body. Nothing about the circumstances of claimant's sexual assault appears to have been employment related  at most, her job provided a place for the encounter. ¶ 28 Several jurisdictions have analyzed the interplay of risks in rape cases pressed as compensation claims. In Western Airlines v. Workers' Comp. Appeals Bd.,  [40] a female employee was raped during a layover between flights. The court found that the attack occurred during the course of employment, but did not arise out of her employment. [41] It ruled that whether harm from an assault by another arises out of employment depends upon whether the assault is made by reasons or circumstances connected with the employment. [42] The facts failed to show a connection between the victim's employment and her becoming a target for the perpetrated sexual assault. [43] The court ruled that her rape arose out of a personal risk, which occurred at work. When unrelated to employment, rape is not compensable. [44] The nature of the victim's employment duties played no part in the attacker's formulation of intent to rape her; it merely provided a stage for the event. [45] ¶ 29 In City of Richmond v. Braxton, [46] a supervisor sexually assaulted a female subordinate. The court analyzed the risk factors and determined that no causal nexus existed between the claimant's injury and the conditions under which the employer required her work to be performed. [47] The arising out of employment requirement excludes injuries which cannot be traced to an increased risk having its origin in employment. [48] A sexual attack claim could succeed only if a necessary causal connection was shown by establishing that the attack was directed at the claimant as an employee or because of her employment. [49] An attack is not compensable if found (a) to be of a personal nature and not directed against the employee as part of the employment relationship and (b) not to occur in connection with the employer's business. [50] ¶ 30 In Massie v. Godfather's Pizza, Inc., [51] the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit declared rape (in the suit there) to be a personal risk inherent in the female gender of the victim, not in the nature of her duties or of the work environment. In its analysis the court clearly explained the requisite nexus : ... it is clear that the rape was n[ot] distinctly associated with [the victim's] employment.... It was a non-employment motivated act of wanton brutality directed at the [victim] because she was a women [ sic ]. There is nothing to indicate that any other woman  whether or not a[n]... employee  who happened to be in the same area at the time of the attack would not have been the victim.... It is clear that she was not raped because of the nature of her duties or the nature of her workplace environment, nor because of any incident or quarrel growing out of the work. [52] ¶ 31 Claimant has failed to prove the essential nexus between the attack and her employment. That probative burden was hers to bear alone. Absent the required link, the assault must be considered to have arisen out of the attacker's purely personal motives wholly unrelated to events arising out of her employment. IV