Court Opinion

ID: 9858172
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:17:45.286386+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:53:25.848342
License: Public Domain

ALLBEE, Justice
(dissenting).
I cannot agree that the death of Reginald DeWayne Cady arose out of his employment. The facts are not disputed. Cady’s death came at the hands of a deranged fellow employee. This bizarre occurrence was unrelated to any ordinary employment-connected hazard. As a matter of law, this occurrence cannot be said to meet the test: whether the “injury followfed] as a natural incident of the work.” Musselman v. Central Telephone Co., 261 Iowa 352, 355, 154 N.W.2d 128, 130 (1967).
Nor am I able to accept the court’s borrowed analogy which equates the mental derangement of a human being with a machine malfunction. As recently noted in another context, “[pjeople do not function like machines.” Maquoketa Valley Community School District v. Maquoketa Valley Education Association, 279 N.W.2d 510, 516 (Iowa 1979) (McCormick, J., dissenting). Neither do people malfunction like machines.
While purporting to apply the workers’ compensation law broadly and liberally, I am convinced that the court has gone far beyond any result contemplated by the drafters of the statute. I therefore dissent from division I of the court’s opinion and the result.
LeGrand and McGiverin, JJ., join in this dissent.