Opinion ID: 1249619
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Resolution of the Discovery Issue.

Text: The industrial commissioner in assessing the discovery issue stated: Claimant knew shortly after the incident at the nursing home that she had been exposed to hepatitis C. She was tested, and informed of the seriousness of the disease or condition [which she did not yet have]. She was counseled to return for further testing in six to twelve months for a final determination regarding her status. She was fully informed of the need for the testing, and underwent the initial tests. Claimant did not follow-up with the medical care providers to undergo the later testing. Claimant knew of the possibility that she contracted hepatitis C at the time she took the initial test, October 11, 1990. As of October 11, 1990, she had been informed that the patient had hepatitis C. Based on the evidence, it cannot be determined that claimant was unaware of the seriousness of her condition, and that the condition was work-related. Claimant failed to file her petition within two years after the date of the injury, which was October 2, 1990. As a result, she takes nothing from these proceedings. (Emphasis added.) None of our cases, and none of those cited by the HEA or the industrial commissioner, have applied the rule of law announced in the commissioner's ruling, i.e., that exposure to a disease triggers a duty to inquire further. In all of the Iowa cases discussed in this opinion, the claimant knew he or she was injured, not merely exposed to injury, before the duty to inquire arose. In some cases the claimant did not know how serious the injury was or whether it was work-related, but in all of the cases the claimant knew he or she had suffered an injury before the statute of limitations began to run. The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in another hepatitis C case, reached the same conclusion: Mere exposure to an infectious disease, no matter how threatening, is not enough to constitute a compensable eventit is not accidental injury. An on-the-job exposure must pass through the incubation period and develop into an infectious disease before it may be viewed as an accidental injury compensable by the employer. An employer's apprehension of an employee's exposure to a disease, even when followed by the act of administering prophylactic vaccination, cannot be translated into compensation liability for an accidental personal injury. Dyke, 861 P.2d at 301-02. If there is anything clear in this record with respect to the condition to which the commissioner referred, it is that as of the time Perkins is charged with inquiry notice she had not been injured. She had been exposed through a traumatic and frightening event, but she was not injured. If, as we have said, inquiry notice does not arise from every minor ache, pain, or symptom, Swartzendruber, 613 N.W.2d at 650, inquiry notice surely cannot be triggered when there is no ache, pain, or symptom of an injury. An injury is generally defined as [t]he violation of another's legal right, for which the law provides a remedy; a wrong or injustice. See Black's Law Dictionary 789 (1999). Our workers' compensation law does not provide a remedy for a person who has merely been exposed to injury. We hold the date of injury was the date Perkins discovered she had hepatitis C, April 20, 1996, the date it was diagnosed. It did not commence from the date she was exposed to it. The industrial commissioner's application of a contrary rule in this case is affected by other error of law, Iowa Code § 17A.19(8)(e), and must be reversed. We therefore affirm, although on different grounds, both the ruling of the court of appeals and the judgment of the district court. DECISION OF COURT OF APPEALS AND JUDGMENT OF DISTRICT COURT AFFIRMED. All justices concur except NEUMAN, J., who takes no part.