Court Opinion

ID: 9764028
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:08:17.34791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:52.016091
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN N. LIMBAUGH, Jr., Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The majority does an admirable job in interpreting and explaining the elusive meaning of the terms of section 287.120.1, RSMo 1994, that authorize compensation to employees for personal injuries from accidents “arising out of and in the course of’ their employment. For the first time, this Court makes particular note of the 1993 statutory amendment that further defined the words “injury” and “accident.” To summarize the majority’s analysis, the “arising out of and in the course of’ requirement is met when the accident is “clearly work related,” which means that the employee’s work must be a “substantial factor,” not merely a “triggering or precipitating factor” in causing the accident. In addition, it must be shown that the injury resulting from the accident was not caused by a hazard or risk unrelated to the wprk, a hazard or risk “to which workers would have been equally exposed outside of and unrelated to the employment in normal nonemployment life.” Among such hazards or risks are those that are “idiopathic”— peculiar to the individual — although even those are compensable if exacerbated by the requirements of the work. Unfortunately, having accurately stated the law, the majority then proceeds to misapply the law to the facts of this case in such an excessively liberal manner that one is hard-pressed to imagine any injury from an accident at work that is not compensable.
I strongly disagree that any requirement of claimant’s job was a substantial factor in the fall that caused her injury. The require*856ment that claimant arise from her chair to dispense medicine to residents at the care facility was, instead, nothing more than a triggering or precipitating factor, which, in and of itself, as the majority concedes, is not a sufficient connection to the accident and the injury. While the job requirement was clearly related to the accident and injury, it was not the kind of substantial factor that should result in compensability. It is not enough to show merely that the claimant suffered an injury while working. Abel v. Mike Russell’s Standard Service, 924 S.W.2d 502, 504 (Mo. banc 1996).
I also dispute the majority’s tacit conclusion that the hazard or risk of injury from a foot falling asleep after sitting in a chair is something to which claimant would not have been equally exposed outside of her employment. As this Court stated in Abel, “recovery under section 287.120.1 follows only where a condition unique to or exacerbated by the workplace exists and contributes to cause the injury.” Id. Here, the majority fails to point to any condition unique to or exacerbated by claimant’s work that existed and contributed to cause her injury. The reason for this failure should be obvious: claimant’s foot could have fallen asleep wherever she had been seated, whether at work, or at home, or elsewhere.
The majority cannot fairly distinguish the Abel decision. In that ease, this Court affirmed the decision of the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission denying compensation to the claimant, Abel, who suffered an “intercerebral hematoma” from a fall on the pavement of a gasoline station. The record showed that the fall occurred when claimant fainted while checking credit card receipts at one of the gas pumps as part of his duties as a “gas attendant.” Although claimant was fulfilling the requirements of his job at the time of the accident, and the accident and injury was in that sense related to his employment, the Court held that there was no causal connection to claimant’s injury. As the Court explained, “although his injuries occurred in the course of his employment, nothing about this condition of his workplace enhanced the effects of gravity or made the conditions of his workplace any different from or any more dangerous than those a member of the general public could expect to confront in a non-working setting.” Id. The case at hand is no different. No facts in either case showed that the hazard or risk of employment was something different from that which would have been encountered in everyday life. Furthermore, claimant’s duty to dispense medicine was no more a substantial factor in causing her injury than Abel’s duty to check credit card receipts at the gas pumps was a substantial factor in causing his injury.
The majority decision is more understandable given its misplaced deference to the Commission’s purported findings of fact. The Commission acknowledged that “[tjhere are really no material facts in dispute.” The “facts” are that claimant was sitting in a chair at the care center, and when the time came for her to dispense medication to the residents, she arose from her chair and fell because her foot had fallen asleep. The Commission’s “finding” — that the conditions of Mrs. Kasl’s required work caused the accident — is simply an application of the law to the uncontested facts. It is a conclusion of law to which this Court owes no deference. La-Z-Boy Chair Co. v. The Director of Economic Development, 983 S.W.2d 523, 524-25 (Mo. banc 1999). Moreover, the Commission’s so-called “finding” was based exclusively on this Court’s now-suspect holding in Kloppenburg v. Queen Size Shoes, Inc., 704 S.W.2d 234 (Mo. banc 1986), a case with nearly identical facts involving an employee who fell when she arose from her chair because her foot had fallen asleep. In my view, the 1993 amendments to the statutory definition of “accident” and “injury,” coupled with the Abel decision, have effectively overruled Kloppenburg.
I would reverse the decision of the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission.