Court Opinion

ID: 9779658
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 00:31:33.193798+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:37.406463
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HOLDRIDGE, specially concurring. I concur. I write separately to note my concurrence only with the majority’s holding that the claimant has met her burden of showing that she was exposed to a risk greater than the general public. As the majority observed, the claimant testified at the arbitration hearing that she was required to use the sidewalk where the “dip” was located in making the bank deposits two or three times every week. The Commission specifically found that this evidence established that the claimant was exposed to the risk of the “dip” in the driveway with greater frequency than members of the general public. As this finding by the Commission is not against the manifest weight of the evidence, the award of compensation should be affirmed on that basis alone. As this case is simply one where the Commission found that the claimant was exposed to risk greater than the general public by virtue of the number of times she was required by her employment to be exposed to the sidewalk defect, I see no need to go further with analysis of the so-called “street risk” doctrine. The doctrine, which is in essence the “traveling employee” doctrine (see Potenzo v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Comm’n, 378 Ill. App. 3d 113, 119 (2007)), does nothing to clarify what a claimant must do to establish that his or her injuries arose out of his or her employment. The concept that merely because an employee’s employment places him on the street there is a “presumption” that all the hazards of the street are now hazards of his employment is a particularly unappealing one. Is this presumption rebuttable? Does this presumption not impermissibly shift the burden to the employer to show that the claimant is not entitled to benefits? Should the “street risk” doctrine now also be expanded, as in the instant matter, to a new “sidewalk risk” doctrine? These are questions which do not need to be addressed, if we confine our analysis to whether the claimant can establish that her employment, either quantitatively or qualitatively, exposed her to a risk greater than that of the general public. Potenzo, 378 Ill. App. 3d at 117. Here, the Commission determined that the claimant had met her burden of proof, without any presumption. I would find that the Commission’s decision was not against the manifest weight of the evidence. I would affirm the Commission on that basis alone.