Court Opinion

ID: 9667438
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:45:37.607762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:37.818578
License: Public Domain

ROACH, Dissenting Justice.
Because the majority opinion has twisted the plain language of KRS 342.0011(1) beyond recognition, I respectfully dissent.
The result in this case hinges on a pure question of statutory interpretation. To be sure, the claimant is a brave and honorable police officer who has suffered injuries sustained in the admirable performance of his duties to protect the public. But our sympathy for this officer cannot override our duty to apply the law as it is written. Likewise, our outcome should not depend on whether this Court believes an employee suffering from work-related psychological injuries ought to be entitled to recover workers’ compensation benefits in the absence of any physical injury. Instead, this case simply requires that we interpret and apply a statute that has been passed by the General Assembly, the branch of government that is empowered to decide the laws of this Commonwealth.
KRS 342.0011(1) provides the following definition of injury, as that term is used within the workers’ compensation statutes:
“Injury” means any work-related traumatic event or series of traumatic events, including cumulative trauma, arising out of and in the course of employment which is the proximate cause producing a harmful change in the human organism evidenced by objective medical findings. “Injury” does not include the effects of the natural aging process, and does not include any communicable disease unless the risk of contracting the disease is increased by the nature of the employment. “Injury” when used generally, unless the context indicates otherwise, shall include an occupational disease and damage to a prosthetic appliance, but shall not include a psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related change in the human organism, unless it is a direct result of a physical injury.
The final sentence of the statute clearly states that the term injury under our workers’ compensation system does “not include a psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related change in the human organism, unless it is a direct result of physical injury.” (Emphasis added). Of course, one can imagine any number of grim factual scenarios where reasonable parties might argue that a “psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related change in the human organism” directly resulted from the occurrence of a physical injury. Sadly, in the matter before us, no one could reasonably argue that Officer White’s psychological or mental injuries were in any way related to a physical injury that he suffered.
In workers’ compensation matters, an administrative law judge (ALJ) makes findings of fact that ultimately determine whether a worker is entitled to compensa*29tion under the law. KRS 342.285 states that the ALJ’s decision is “conclusive and binding as to all questions of fact.” Yet, in the matter before us, the majority ignores the ALJ’s finding that there was no physical injury. The ALJ’s opinion made this point unequivocally, stating:
While Officer White points to the [Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government v.] West[, 52 S.W.3d 564 (Ky.2001),] decision in support of his claim for workers’ compensation benefits, that case is inapposite to the situation herein. Officer West sustained physical trauma in the form of cuts, scratches, and abrasions during her physical altercation with a knife-wielding suspect. Officer White admitted that he did not sustain any physical injury, however slight. In his brief, Officer White points to the fact that his skin came in contact with blood from the deceased individual and characterized this event as an “assault.” In support if this argument, he notes that an Assaulted Officer Report was completed following the incident. However, while the official department form does contain the caption of Assaulted Officer Report, it does not reflect any physical injury or trauma to Officer White. Further, there is no lay or medical evidence of any physical assault or even a minor physical injury.
(Emphasis added). The ALJ concluded:
However, KRS 342.0011(1) does not provide workers’ compensation benefits for the psychiatric effects in the absence of a physical injury. See McCowan v. Matsushita Appliance Company, Ky., 95 S.W.3d 30 (2002); Knott County Nursing Home v. Wallen, Ky., 74 S.W.3d 706 (2002); Coleman v. Emily Enterprises, Inc., Ky., 58 S.W.3d 459 (2001). There simply was no physical injury to Officer White which proximately caused the resultant post-traumatic stress disorders. Rather, it was the stress and psychiatric impact of the life-threatening situation which resulted in post-traumatic stress disorder.
(Emphasis added.) Despite the presence of unassailable factual findings by the ALJ, including the claimant’s admission that he suffered no physical injury and the fact that there was “no lay or medical evidence” that the claimant suffered even a “minor physical injury,” this Court nevertheless concludes that the claimant has suffered a physical injury.
Worse still, the majority’s theory of physical injury, which it uses to supplant the ALJ’s factual findings, is a novel premise, one that is entirely different from that proposed by Officer White. Relying on Ryan’s Family Steakhouse v. Thomasson, 82 S.W.3d 889 (Ky.2002), the majority finds that Officer White’s physical injury was his physical exertion in “Performing CPR and first aid on an individual with multiple gunshot wounds .... ” Ante at 27. But the physical injury that Officer White claimed before the ALJ, the Board of Workers’ Compensation Claims, the Court of Appeals, and this Court was his contact with blood and other bodily fluids during the course of rendering first aid to the man he had just been forced to shoot — not the physical exertion involved in performance of those acts. The majority even admits that it is avoiding the issue that has actually been presented when it notes: “Under the circumstances, it is unnecessary to consider whether physical contact with another’s blood and body fluids, by itself, would constitute a traumatic event.” Ante at 28. In so doing, the majority opinion goes much further than the commonly accepted practice of a court embracing a legal rationale that differs from that presented by the parties. Instead, it has manufactured an entirely new factual claim and substituted it for the one actually of*30fered by the claimant.1 Even if one assumes that the majority’s physical exertion theory correctly applies our law, it is not the role of this Court to create entirely new factual claims to buttress a workers’ compensation claim.
No doubt, the majority engages in this approach in order to avoid reaching the result that our recent jurisprudence in this area would otherwise compel — that mere contact with blood and other bodily fluids alone is a physical injury for purposes of the statute. This is precisely the position taken by Officer White who, in the words of Judge Minton’s dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals, equates “mere touching” with “physical injury.” Such a result seems ludicrous, but it is required if we honestly apply our recent case law.
As has been noted repeatedly in our eases, the definition of injury in KRS 342.0011(1) was amended in 1994 so as to exclude “a psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related change in the human organism, unless it is a direct result of a physical injury.” In Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government v. West, 52 S.W.3d 564, 566 (Ky.2001), this Court noted that the purpose of the 1994 amendment was to bar recovery for so-called “mental-mental” injuries. At the time, the first sentence of the statute defined a compensable injury as “any work-related harmful change in the human organism, arising out of and in the course of employment....” The statute was amended to its present form in 1996 and the first sentence was altered to read: “‘Injury’ means any work-related traumatic event or series of traumatic events, including cumulative trauma, arising out of and in the course of employment which is the proximate cause producing a harmful change in the human organism evidenced by objective medical findings.”
In the line of cases beginning with West, this Court has held that the 1996 amendment significantly changed the meaning of the term “injury,” as it is used throughout the statute, so that it now “refers to the traumatic event or series of events that causes a harmful change rather than to the harmful change, itself.” Id. at 566. Applying this substantially different meaning of the term injury to the phrase “physical injury,” as used in the last sentence of the statute, the court held:
[A] “physical injury” is an event that involves physical trauma and proximately causes a harmful change in the human organism that is evidenced by objective medical findings. An event that involves physical trauma may be viewed as a “physical injury” without regard to whether the harmful change that directly and proximately results is physical, psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related. But in instances where the harmful change is psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related, it must directly result from the physically traumatic event.
Id. at 566-67. Rather than giving the phrase “physical injury” its plain meaning, the Court simply injected the new “definition” of injury from the first sentence of the statute — i.e., “work-related traumatic event or series of traumatic events, including cumulative trauma, arising out of and in the course of employment which is the proximate cause producing a harmful change in the human organism” — into the phrase “physical injury” in the statute’s last sentence.
This reading of the phrase “physical injury” is simply Incorrect. KRS *31342.0011(1) as a whole defines the term “injury,” with the first sentence of the statute denoting the general use of the term and the subsequent sentences adding further qualification. At first glance, it would appear that the General Assembly committed a classic error of circular definition by employing the phrase “physical injury” within the statutory definition of the word “injury.” West relied on this confusing phrasing as requiring that the first sentence be read back into the last sentence. But it is difficult to believe that the General Assembly had this in mind when it amended the statute in 1996.
However, West’s tortured construction of the statute is not justified given the beginning of the sentence in which the phrase “physical injury” is used. The sentence reads, “ ‘injury’ when used generally, unless the context indicates otherwise, shall include an occupational disease and damage to a prosthetic appliance, but shall not include a psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related change in the human organism, unless it is a direct result of a physical injury.” (Emphasis added.) The use of “when used generally” excepts the later use of the phrase “physical injury” out of the definition of the word “injury” provided in the first sentence of the statute. Read in this manner, the phrase “physical injury” has a distinctive meaning and is most appropriately understood in light of its common usage to denote a physical harm. Thus, in order to be compensable, a mental injury must directly result from a physical harm, rather than a mere physical event. To conclude otherwise, as in West, clearly contravenes the intent of the 1994 amendment, which was designed to shrink the class of compensable mental injuries.
Furthermore, the Court’s holding in West leads inevitably to the conclusion that the statute allows compensation for those situations where only nominal physical contact or innocuous touching results in demonstrable mental harm. West is fundamentally flawed because it removes the requirement that there be a causal relationship between a claimant’s mental injury and some actual physical harm. The difference between allowing a police officer suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome induced by a fight that produced only nominal physical injuries, as in West, and allowing a police officer suffering severe anxiety induced by prolonged exposure to the blood and bodily fluids of a stranger, as here, is a difference of degree but not of substance. Although West has been read to allow damages in only those situations where a “physically traumatic event” which produces a psychological or mental injury also produces at least nominal physical harm,2 such a conclusion is illogical. By defining “physical injury” as a “physically traumatic event,” West ⅛ essential feature is to decouple a claimant’s mental injury from any identifiable physical malady. In light of this discussion, it is clear that the Court of Appeals applied West rather straightforwardly in reaching its conclusion that Officer White had suffered a “physical injury” in this case and was entitled to compensation. But because West incorrectly construed KRS 342.011(1), which actually requires that a mental injury must directly result from a physical harm, rather than a mere physical event, in order to be compensable, I would reverse the Court of Appeals.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
COOPER and JOHNSTONE, JJ., join this dissenting opinion.

. It is particularly telling that the majority ultimately has to remand the matter for a determination of whether the “physical exertion” — the performance of CPR and first aid — directly caused Officer White's mental distress, since no evidence was offered to the ALJ that would support this theory.

. Such an interpretation is evident in the findings of the AU which are noted above.