Opinion ID: 1967152
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Claimant is Precluded From Receiving Benefits by the Intoxication Disqualification Contained in Section 85.16(2).

Text: The employer's statutory defense based on intoxication provides: No compensation under this chapter shall be allowed for an injury caused: . . . . 2. By the employee's intoxication, which did not arise out of and in the course of employment but which was due to the effects of alcohol or another narcotic, depressant, stimulant, hallucinogenic, or hypnotic drug not prescribed by an authorized medical practitioner, if the intoxication was a substantial factor in causing the injury. Iowa Code § 85.16(2) (emphasis added). For the intoxication defense to apply, the intoxication must have been both the cause in fact of the injury and a substantial factor in producing it. Reddick v. Grand Union Tea Co., 230 Iowa 108, 117, 296 N.W. 800, 804 (1941). The burden is on the employer to prove the elements of this defense by a preponderance of the evidence. Id. The term intoxication is not defined by statute. Claimant urges this court to adopt the definition of intoxication discussed in Benavides v. J.C. Penney Life Insurance Co., 539 N.W.2d 352 (Iowa 1995), to determine whether he was intoxicated. In that case, we considered an insurance-policy exclusion based on intoxication. We opined that: A person is under the influence of alcohol and therefore intoxicated when one or more of the following are true: (1) the person's reason or mental ability has been affected; (2) the person's judgment is impaired; (3) the person's emotions are visibly excited; and (4) the person has, to any extent, lost control of bodily actions or motions. Benavides, 539 N.W.2d at 355 (citations omitted). We recognized in Benavides that the blood-alcohol level revealed by chemical testing is important evidence on the question of intoxication. Id. We accept claimant's invitation to rely on the Benavides standard of intoxication in deciding whether he was intoxicated. The evidence shows that claimant consumed a large amount of alcohol the evening before his injury and that his blood-alcohol level was still at .094 nearly thirty minutes after his fall and after receiving fluids intravenously. The employer presented expert testimony from Michael Rehberg, a toxicologist with the State Criminalistics Laboratory, which indicated that claimant's ability to perform his job would have been impaired by the level of alcohol in his blood. Specifically, this witness testified that this level would impair his reaction time, his visual acuity, his actual ability to see clearly and perceive the world about him. It would have affected his peripheral vision, his ability to see to the sideit would have closed in so he could have been experiencing tunnel vision, but certainly loss of vision to the sidehis balance, his coordination, his dexterity, his actual ability to see and perceive the world around him and decide how to act within that world, and anything that he did with regard to divided attention where you look at one thing, think about another thing, and then put those two factors together and conduct your business, all those kinds of things would have been affected. We conclude that this testimony constitutes substantial evidence to support a finding that claimant was intoxicated at the time of his injury based on the Benavides standards. As previously noted, section 85.16(2) also requires the employer to prove claimant's intoxication was a cause in fact of the injury and a substantial factor in producing it. This was not an easy issue for the industrial commissioner to decide. The circumstances of claimant's fall would support a finding that it was the result of the hazardous position in which he was placed while working near an unstable edge of the roof and might have occurred irrespective of his intoxication. However, in challenging an agency finding, a party may not succeed merely by showing that the evidence would support a different conclusion than the one that the agency reached. S.E. Iowa Coop. Elec. Ass'n v. Iowa Utils. Bd., 633 N.W.2d 814, 818 (Iowa 2001). In order to succeed, it must be demonstrated that, as a matter of law, the finding that the agency made was not supported by substantial evidence. Id. Evidence is substantial if a reasonable person would consider it sufficient to support the agency's finding. Second Injury Fund v. Klebs, 539 N.W.2d 178, 180 (Iowa 1995). The expert toxicologist who testified on behalf of the employer stated: Q. Based on your training, experience, knowledge, and within a reasonable degree of certainty, do you have an opinion whether Mr. Garcia's intoxication level of alcohol was a substantial factor in causing his fall? A. Yes, the level of alcohol in Mr. Garcia's body would have impaired his ability to conduct the job, would have been affecting him, would have been a meaningful factor in this accident, fall. Q. Why? A. To achieve this level in his body at this time, he either had to drink in a different way than he states or he had to drink more alcohol than he states. But be that as it may, how he got there doesn't make any difference. The fact that he was there, that he had this alcohol load in his body at the time of this accident, to me as a toxicologist shows me that the alcohol was one of the causes of this accident. Although the agency was not required to credit this testimony, it did. We conclude that this testimony constituted substantial evidence to support the industrial commissioner's finding on the causation issue. We have considered all issues presented and conclude that the decision of the district court should be affirmed. AFFIRMED.