Court Opinion

ID: 9697030
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:04:13.321466+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:28.647588
License: Public Domain

Morse, J.,
dissenting. I respectfully dissent. The Court reverses a decision of the Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Labor and Industry awarding workers’ compensation benefits for an injury sustained while claimant was engaged in “horseplay” with another employee. The basic criteria of analysis utilized by the Commissioner are not disputed by the Court. Rather, the Court disagrees with the Commissioner’s application of the law to the facts, holding that the horseplay constituted a substantial deviation from the course of employment and therefore was not compensable.
Under settled standards of review, the Court has stepped out of its proper role. The Court is not to second-guess the Commissioner’s conclusions. The Court’s duty, rather, is to affirm the judgment if the facts fairly and reasonably support it. See Kenney v. Rockingham Sch. Dist., 123 Vt. 344, 348, 190 A.2d 702, 705 (1963). Where reasonable minds might honestly disagree about whether the injury was sustained in the course of employment, we must defer to the judgment of the Commissioner. See id.
As noted, the Court does not take issue with the general legal standard adopted and applied by the Commissioner. Under that standard, when a claimant’s injury occurs in the course of horseplay and the claimant was an active participant, the claimant must not have “substantially deviated” from the work if the injury is to be considered sustained in the course of employment. See 2 A. Larson & L. Larson, Workers’ Compensation Law § 23.20, at 5-183 (1997). The criteria used in making this determination are as follows: (1) the extent and seriousness of the deviation; (2) the completeness of the deviation (i.e., whether it was commingled with the performance of duty or involved an abandonment of duty); (3) the extent to which the practice of horseplay had become an accepted part of the employment; and (4) the extent to which the nature of the employment may be expected to include some such horseplay. Id. § 23.00, at 5-178.
With respect to the extent and seriousness of the deviation, as well as its completeness, the Commissioner found that claimant and his fellow employee had completed virtually all the work that needed to be done in the absence of customers and that business was very slow that day When the injury occurred, claimant and his fellow employee were in a period of enforced idleness while they waited for customers. They were not actively pursuing any specific tasks and were passing *554the time as required by their jobs. As Larson points out, when there is a lull in work, there are no duties to abandon. During such periods, the deviation can be more substantial than at other times when an employee may be actively pursuing a task directly related to employment. Id. § 23.65, at 5-219, 5-226 to 5-227. The Commissioner could thus reasonably conclude that the horseplay in this case did not constitute an abandonment of duties or even a serious deviation from the demands of work at that time of day.
Regarding the extent to which such horseplay had become an accepted activity, the Commissioner found that it had been a commonplace occurrence at the store. Although the executive assistant to defendant’s president testified that claimant’s horseplay was not considered acceptable behavior, he acknowledged that an employee would not be fired for engaging in such activity. The Commissioner thus reasonably concluded that the horseplay as engaged in by claimant, while not condoned by the employer, was a tacit part of employment. See Jean Fluet, Inc. v. Harrison, 652 So. 2d 1209, 1212 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1995) (finding that activity of “nail tossing,” though not expressly tolerated, was sufficiently commonplace to be impliedly tolerated); Industrial Comm’r v. McCarthy, 68 N.E.2d 434, 435-36 (N.Y. 1946) (finding that particular horseplay engaged in by waiters was more or less customary and had become part and parcel of employment).
Finally, the Commissioner could reasonably conclude that work in a retail establishment might be expected to include such horseplay. The Commissioner characterized the claimant and his fellow employee as “suffering through a very slow day in a retail establishment,” having quoted Larson as noting that “idleness breeds mischief, so that if idleness is a fixture of the employment, its handmaiden mischief is also.” (Quoting 2 Larson & Larson, supra, § 23.65, at 5-219.) Retail work necessitates passing time if there are no customers demanding attention. “Employers, whose work require[s] that men wait upon the job for work conditions, ought not to be heard to say that an accident, occurring out of the very conditions presented by the required waiting, is not compensatory.” Gillmore v. Ring Constr. Co., 61 S.W.2d 764, 766 (Mo. Ct. App. 1933). The Commissioner’s determination that the nature of the business lent itself to the horseplay in question was fairly and reasonably supported by the facts.
In sum, the Commissioner applied the proper legal standard to the facts, and the evidence fairly and reasonably supports the Commis*555sioner’s conclusion, a conclusion that, I might add, is a reasonable one given the policy of the law to help alleviate the consequences of injury in the workplace. It is not our prerogative to reverse the Commissioner’s decision merely because we would have reached a different conclusion. We must, in these circumstances, defer to the judgment of the administrative agency charged with the initial decision-making responsibility. See Kenney, 123 Vt. at 348, 190 A.2d at 704-05. Therefore, I would affirm the Commissioner’s award of compensation.