Court Opinion

ID: 9772711
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:27:22.35859+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:47.265068
License: Public Domain

BLACKMAR, Senior Judge,
dissenting.
The employee sustained a fall, the cause of which could not be precisely determined. He struck his head on the concrete apron of a service station. As a direct result of striking his head he suffered substantial injury. Yet we are told that he is not entitled to workers’ compensation for this injury because it did not arise “out of’ his employment. The framers of the workers’ compensation statute would be shocked at this conclusion, as his friends and neighbors undoubtedly would. They would say that he was injured in a work-related accident.
Our statute uses the phrase “out of and in the course of his employment,” as do the great majority of workers’ compensation statutes in the United States and other common law nations. The governing principle of workers’ compensation is clear. In place of an uncertain common law remedy with numerous exceptions and qualifications, but with no ceiling on recovery, the statutes substituted a supposedly sure and certain remedy with a prescribed scale of benefits. Some common law judges did not take well to the innovation and borrowed concepts such as proximate cause from the prior tort law. The notion of fault also survived in some decisions, not perhaps in the sense of negligence, but in the thought that employers should not be liable for injuries that they were without power to prevent. Yet courts realized that the purpose of the compensation statutes was to supersede rather than to perpetuate tort concepts, and inconsistent decisions appeared in the laws of numerous jurisdictions. The process is described in Larson, The Law of Workers Compensation, Sec. 6.10. Professor Larson points out that there has been a gradual process of maturation of the approach to workers’ compensation statutes, with the better considered recent decisions opting for a simple ‘Taut for” test in determining whether an accident arises “out of and in the course of employment.” Would the accident have happened had the employee not been performing the duties of his employment? The guiding principle is that work-related injuries should be compensated.
There is no need, however, to consider decisions from other states. In Wolfgeher v. Wagner Cartage Service, 646 S.W.2d 781 (Mo. banc 1983), this Court commented on the inconsistencies and incongruities of the prior decisions in Missouri, and essentially adopted the “work-related injury” test. The scope of the decision is demonstrated in the dissenting opinion of Judge Welliver, who said, “The time is totally inappropriate for the Court to construe accidental injury to mean any ‘job related’ injury.” Id at 786. He accurately interprets the intendment of the decision in explaining his reasons for not joining in the opinion.
Wolfgeher, it is true, was not a fall case. There the Court did away with the requirement of “unusual or abnormal strain” in cases in which no external traumatic force is demonstrated. The employee was moving a refrigerator and suffered a back strain as he was turning on a stair landing. There is no showing that the condition of the premises contributed to the injury or that the employee slipped or fell. The load was of the kind he usually moved. He apparently simply was not strong enough. The Court concluded, none the less, that he should receive compensation.
In Kloppenburg v. Queen Size Shoes, Inc.,. 704 S.W.2d 234 (Mo.App.1986), a shoe clerk was sitting on a chair with her legs crossed, waiting for customers. She jumped up when the telephone rang and hastened to answer it, but her leg had “gone to sleep,” and she fell, injuring her right arm. One searches in vain for “conditions of the work place” (opinion, p. 502) or “casual connection between the conditions of employment and the employee’s injury” (op. at p. 504) or a “condition unique to the workplace,” (op. at pp. 504, 505.) By inserting those qualifications, the principal opinion simply fails to follow controlling precedent. It will not do to suggest that, in Kloppenburg, the employee was hurrying to *506answer the telephone. The injury is one that might well have happened no matter how fast she moved. The Court gave no indication that the decision turned on minute points.
Then the Court seeks to distinguish Alexander v. D.L. Sitton Motor Lines, 851 S.W.2d 525 (Mo. banc 1993), because, there, the employee fell from a four foot height. The author is embarrassed by the Court’s statement that “a casual connection is established if the conditions of the work place contributed to cause the accident, even if the precipitating cause was idiopathic,” suggesting, “[t]his language is, of course, broad.” The language, however, is appropriate, and in line with Wolfgeher and Kloppenburg. There is no reason to distinguish between a four foot elevation, or a four inch elevation, or a concrete apron. Any school child knows that a skater might skin a knee on concrete, while being able to break a fall easily by reaching the grass. The principal opinion seizes on the suggestion in the next to last paragraph in Alexander that the claimant might have suffered no injuries at all if he had not been on the platform. The opinion does not say that, if he had suffered injury from a fall to a concrete surface, the injury would not have been compensable. That ease imposes liability for injuries arising out of “conditions of the work place that contribute to cause the accident or exacerbate the injuries.” (Emphasis supplied). It is manifest that Mr. Abel’s injuries were exacerbated when his head struck the concrete.
Cox v. Tyson Foods Inc., 920 S.W.2d 534 (Mo. banc 1996) is not in point factually, but is helpful in demonstrating this Court’s adherence to the concept of “work-related injury” as a basis for compensation.
The principal opinion fails to discuss the recent controlling decisions of this Court. It apparently calls for deeper analysis of Collins v. Combustion Engineering Co., 490 S.W.2d 394 (Mo.App.1973), an appeals decision more than 23 years old overruled by this Court in Alexander. With due respect to the court that decided Collins, discussion of the later controlling authorities would be more helpful. Automobile Club Inter-Insurance Exchange v. Bevel, 663 S.W.2d 242 (Mo. banc 1984) is not a workers’ compensation case at all but rather a decision involving a liability insurance policy. Even though the workers’ compensation law is involved in construing the policy, the ease was not decided under the injunction of liberal construction of section 287.800, RSMo1986, but rather under the rule of strict construction of insurance policies. The case is not at all in point and is not helpful here.
The principal opinion also perpetuates the concept of “out of’ and “in the course” of employment as separate requirements. Larson suggests that this approach has been discredited and that “the basic concept of compensation coverage is unitary, not dual, and is best expressed in the term “work related.” Our controlling decisions agree. The present decision beats an undesirable retreat. It invites constant litigation over trivial points. What if an employee who faints on a level surface strikes her head on a projecting shelf? What if an employee’s head hits the seat when he falls out of a chair?
The principal opinion is out of line with the controlling cases. The court of appeals correctly interpreted existing precedent. This Court now changes the uniform course of recent decisions, without analysis. I would reverse the decision of the Commission and remand for determination of the compensation due.