Court Opinion

ID: 9757877
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:02:56.819238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:45.182580
License: Public Domain

GARY W. LYNCH, Presiding Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the principal opinion. As explained there, coughing — a condition common to all humans — is not a condition peculiar to Claimant and, thus, by definition is not idiopathic. Because Claimant’s injuries were not the result, either directly or indirectly, of an idiopathic cause, the Commission erred in applying section 287.020.3(3) to deny Claimant compensation for his injuries.
I write separately to point out that our decision in this case is limited solely to that issue. We need not and do not address any issue related to the interplay between subsection 287.020.3(2), which grants compensability for an injury by accident, and subsection 287.020.3(3), which denies compensability for an injury resulting from idiopathic causes. Likewise, we express no opinion as to whether Ahem properly addressed this interplay under its facts.
The legislative changes in 2005 — substantial rewording of section 287.020.3(2), the inclusion of section 287.020.3(3), and the requirement that they be strictly construed — raise several questions. Do these two subsections of 287.020.3 describe two mutually exclusive classes of injuries such that a finding under one excludes a finding under the other? Or, assuming that facts may support findings under both subsections in a particular case, does one trump the other? If so, which one prevails? Because we find that section 287.020.3(3) does not apply to the facts of this case, we necessarily must leave the answers to these questions for another day.