Court Opinion

ID: 9789224
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:30:46.287937+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:44:38.561096
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
with whom WATT, V.C.J., and HODGES, J., join, dissenting.
T1 The court holds today that an employee's idiopathic-fall1 injury, sustained when she fell at the workplace upon a coffee pot, arises from a compensable employment-related risk. I cannot accede to its pronouncement. The critical issue this case presents for resolution is whether by its mere character or location at the locus in quo the offending coffee maker may be regarded as posing a workplace-generated hazard that elevates the danger of physical harm from an idiopathic fall's trauma which one in claimant's circumstances would be expected to suffer. On this record, the law will support only a negative answer. No connection is urged (and none was shown) to indicate that the presence of the coffee maker in the perimeter of claimant's fall increased the severity of harm from her fall. In its position at the scene of the accident the coffee maker did not elevate one iota the danger from a traumatic impact of claimant's fall. At most, its presence may have introduced some minimal risk of thermal harm from claimant's contact with a heated surface of the electrical appliance or with its liquid contents. This claim suffers from both a failure of requisite proof as well as from the absence of an acceptable theory of compensability.2 I would hence sustain the trial judge's order that denies compensation for claimant's idiopathic-fall injury.
T2 The court's distorted tests for evaluation of true workplace risks that affect an idiopathic fall passes as compensable all falls from purely personal hazards. It will make the employer liable for every conceivable injury occasioned by a spontaneous internal systemic failure. Once again, the court's opinion has effectively excised from our legal system the statute's mandate that a compensable injury arise out of claimant's employment.
I
ANATOMY OF LITIGATION
4 3 Inetta Flanner [Flanner}, a child nutrition worker for the Tulsa Public Schools, Independent School District No. 1 [District], was injured 6 March 1998 when she admittedly suffered at work an epileptic seizure and fell onto a coffee pot in the school cafeteria, sustaining burns to her right arm. The trial judge denied compensation based on her finding that the precipitating cause of Flanner's injuries, her idiopathic fall, was not "employment related." The parties stipulated that Flanner's injuries occurred during the course of her employment while she was performing the assigned duties. The Court of Civil Appeals [COCA] sustained the trial judge's order,. This court vacates the *978COCA opinion and declares the accidental fall to be compensable.
II
THE ARISING-OUT-OF-EMPLOYMENT ELEMENT OF PROOF FOR ESTABLISHING COMPENSABILITY
T4 An on-the-job injury, to be compensa-ble, must both arise out of3 and occur in the course of 4 the worker's employment5 The "arise out of" and "in the course of" clauses are not interchangeable in meaning.6 Because the parties stipulated that Flanner's harm occurred in the course of her employment, this review calls solely for an analysis of the arising-out-of element of proof.
15 The compensation law's arising-out-of employment prong contemplates a causal relationship between the act claimant was engaged in at the time of injury and the employment-generated elements of risk.7 Presented for our assessment is an interplay of risks from which we determine if the harm for which compensation is sought has the requisite connection to the hazards of the job.8 Oklahoma jurisprudence recognizes three categories of risk associated with injuries claimed to be compensable: 9 (a) those that are distinctly employment related,10 (2) those purely personal to the worker,11 and (8) those that are neutral.12 This case tenders for our examination the second category-a« purely personal risk from an idiopathic fall.13
IIH
THE COMPENSABILITY OF AN IDIOPATHIC FALL-INJURY IS TO BE GAUGED BY THE PRESENCE OF A WORKPLACE HAZARD - WHOSE MAGNITUDE - ELEVATES - THE DANGER OF INCREASED TRAUMA FROM THE FALL
T6 The employer is not liable in compensation for the consequences of an on-the-job accident occasioned by a worker's idiopathic *979fall.14 An injury from that kind of accident may be regarded as compensable only if it is shown by competent evidence that a harm-dealing force, present within the perimeter of the fall, created a workplace-generated hazard that elevated the danger of trauma from the impact of a worker's idiopathic fall.15 When equipment is being operated within the perimeter of the fall, the severity of the injury may be viewed as increased by the enhanced equipment-inflicted trauma.16 The burden is on the claimant to prove that the workplace milieu elevated the degree of danger from a non-compensable fall of the nature sustained by the claimant.17
T7 The coffee pot's presence within the perimeter of her fall is not a danger-enhance-ing hazard. It did not alter the condition of the premises to make the locus in quo more hazardous for an idiopathic fall's victim. The pot's position (in the school cafeteria) at a nonelevated floor surface where the co-employees may pass by on their way to and from the cafeteria did not operate to create a work-related risk. There is absolutely no nexus here between the appliance's location and the presence of enhanced danger components.18 A fall upon a coffee maker may, at a maximum, alter the kind of injury that is sustained,19 but it neither heightens the fall nor provides greater opportunity for harm, whereas a worker's elevated position above the floor of the locus in quo would expose one to danger of a more severe injury from trauma.20
18 This claim suffers from both a failure of requisite proof and from an absence of an acceptable theory of compensability. The worker here pressed her claim, not on the basis of an increased danger from fall, but rather sought to connect her harm to the coffee pot as a peculiar risk of employment.
19 Today's pronouncement effectively eliminates from the statutory text the "arising-out-of" employment compensability requirement. If injury from ordinary objects in the fall's perimeter does, without more, make an idiopathic fall compensable, every idiopathic-fall injury is at once transformed into compensable harm. This notion runs into collision with Oklahoma's clear statutory exposition that exeludes from an employer's *980liability injuries from "personal risks.21 When work-connected risk element is removed from appellate analysis, as it was done by the court in Fox v. National Carrier,22 the employer becomes liable for every harm that happens on the job. This is so because the unconscious or semi-conscious claimant will in nearly every fall have injured some part of the body. Today's conclusion is plainly contrary to both the letter of Oklahoma's compensation law as well as to all of Oklahoma's pre-Fox jurisprudence. In an obvious response to this court's holding in Foz, the legislature amended the compensation law in 1986. In the wake of the post-Fozx changes, a claimant must prove that the risk of an idiopathic-fall injury is not purely personal, but causally connected to some work-related risk forces that arise out of employment. 23
IV
TODAY'S RELIANCE UPON AN ABERRATIONAL - ABRIDGEMENT - OF THE - EMPLOYERS IMMUNITY FROM IDIOPATHIC-FALL LIABILITY IS INCONSISTENT - WITH OKLAHOMA'S STATUTORY LAW
€{10 Today's reliance on Larson24 for the notion that a worker's idiopathic fall onto familiar objects (such as tables and bookcases) makes on-the-job harm compensable is grossly mistaken. Larson's statement is as incompatible with Oklahoma's post-Fox legislation (enacted in 1986 to rein in this court's emasculation of the arising-out-of element of proof) as it is utterly inconsistent with the weight of extant national jurisprudence. In short, Larson's statement cannot be viewed as a faithful expression of national authority; it is rather an aberrational abridgement of the employer's immunity from liability for idiopathic falls.
{11 I must continue to be bound by a stricto sensu interpretation of explicit legislative exclusion of personal risks as a source of compensation liability.25
y
THE COURT OVERLOOKS THAT THE POSITIONAL-RISK UNDERPINNINGS OF COMPENSATION LIABILITY STAND REJECTED BY OKLAHOMA'S EXTANT CASELAW
T12 The claimant argues the presence of the coffee pot in an area not readily accessible to the public strengthens her position that the accident in contest was causally connected to employment. Her argument follows the compensation law's positional-risk theory.26 The latter, which stands abrogated *981by the teachings of American Management Systems, Inc. v. Burns,27 is no longer available for establishing an injury's causal nexus to the hazards of employment.
113 The 1986 amendment of § 3(7) [now § 3(10)],28 which requires the source of a compensable injury to be to be one that does not stem from a purely personal - risk-plainly - contravenes - this court's teachings of yore in Fox.29 Claimants can no longer rely on the positional-risk theory. Its re-adoption today would allow plainly ordinary ambient risks to be combined with idiopathic falls for creating an accident's compensability.30 The law now demands that the risk responsible for a claimant's injury be causally connected to the work being performed. If the risk stems from neutral or personal sources, their presence must exceed the ordinary forces of hazards to which the general public is exposed. Whether Flanner, when injured, was working near the offending coffee maker is of no consequence. What makes a difference is the absence of forees within the perimeter of her fall which operated to increase the severity of harm from the fall she sustained.
VI
SUMMARY
€14 An idiopathic fall at an employee's workplace is not compensable unless it be shown that work-generated risks in interplay with the internally (and spontaneously) induced fall elevated the danger of exposure to harm. The burden was on this claimant to show that danger-increasing forces were unleashed by the presence of the coffee maker in the perimeter of Flanner's fall. No such showing has been attempted. In this case scenario the coffee maker posed no more than an ordinary hazard of claimant's job milien-perhaps an opportunity of including exposure to thermal harm. This falls short of elevating the severity of injury from the impact of the fall. There is hence no competent evidence to support compens-ability based on heightened dangers from work-connected risks at the locus in quo.
1 15 The court's reliance on Larson's aberrational abridgement of an employer's immunity from liability for idiopathic falls to include all falls onto familiar workplace objects is inconsistent with Oklahoma's explicit statutory mandate that calls for exclusion from compensability of "personal risks."
1 16 I cannot countenance today's adoption of a distorted definition for enhanced workplace risks. The court's return to the teachings of Fox jurisprudence will allow every injury by fall occasioned by a spontaneous internal systemic failure to become com-pensable, thus effectively scuttling the statutory standards. The latter require an injury to arise out of claimant's employment and stem from nonpersonal risk sources.
{17 There is here no record support for the court's conclusion that the trial judge erred in refusing to allow recovery. I would sustain her order denying compensation.

. - For the definition of an idiopathic fall, see infra note.

. See discussion infra in Part III.

. Lanman v. Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office, 1998 OK 37, ¶¶8-11, 958 P.2d 795, 798-800; American Management Systems, Inc. v. Burs, 1995 OK 58, 903 P.2d 288, 291; Thomas v. Keith Hensel Optical Labs, 1982 OK 120, 653 P.2d 201, 202.

. The "in-the-course-of" employment prong relates to the time, place or circumstances under which the injury is sustained. Lanman, supra note 3, at 798; Decker v. Oklahoma State University, 1988 OK 152, 766 P.2d 1371, 1374; Thomas, supra note 3 at 202.

. The pertinent terms of 85 O.S.Supp.1997 § 3 (10) make compensable:
. only accidental injuries arising out of and in the course of employment ... as herein defined. Only injuries having as their source a risk not purely personal but one that is causally connected with the conditions of employment shall be deemed to arise out of the employment.
{emphasis added).

. These two distinct and indispensable elements of a compensable injury are not to be understood as synonymous. Stroud Municipal Hosp. v. Mooney, 1996 OK 127, ¶ 5, 933 P.2d 872, 874; American Management, supra note 3 at 290-91; Thomas, supra note 3 at 202; Richey v. Commander Mills, Inc., 1974 OK 47, 521 P.2d 805, 807.

. - Lanman, supra note 3, at ¶ 9, at 799.

. City of Edmond v. Monday, 1995 OK 132, 910 P.2d 980, 983; Fudge v. University of Oklahoma, 1983 OK 67, 673 P.2d 149, 150.

. Odyssey/Americare of Oklahoma v. Worden, 1997 OK 136, 948 P.2d 309, 311; Michael E. Utter, Arising Out Of And In The Course Of ... (a publication of the Oklahoma Trial Lawyers Association, Nov. 1, 1996). See 1 Larson, Workmen's Compensation Law § 7.00 at 3-12 (1996).

. In the first category of risks are those so uniquely associated with employment that they may be regarded as distinctly employment related (risks that are solely connected with job performance are employment related). 1 Larson, supra note 9, § 7.10 at 3-12 to 3-13.

. Among the personal risks are spontaneous internal systemic failures and crimes intentionally inflicted upon the employee (who happens to be on the job) by persons who harbor personal ill will. In this category, the employment is irrelevant to the harm suffered. 1 Larson, supra note 9, § 7.30, at 3-13 to 3-14).

. The so-called neutral risks, such as weather conditions, which are neither distinctly occupational nor personal, present fact questions to be resolved in each case. Thomas, supra note 3 at 203. An intermixture of employment-related hazards with those that are strangers to the work milieu-because of their neutral or personal character-might be regarded as a fourth category.

. - For personal risks, see supra note 9.

. - An idiopathic fall is one "induced by a spontaneous internal condition." - Boardman Company v. Eddy, 1961 OK 181, ¶ 6, 363 P.2d 821, 823; Moten v. Chandler Well Serv., 1961 OK 125, ¶ 7, 363 P.2d 153, 154 (an idiopathic fall is one "resulting from causes arising out of the mental or physical condition of the employee and not connected with the employment").

. Awards have been approved by appellate courts where the employee, who suffered an idiopathic fall, was working on a ladder or elevated equipment and sustained a fall from that height, which enhanced the ensuing injury. Moten, supra note 14, at ¶ 10, at 154 (idiopathic-fall injury sustained in a fall from a drilling platform would be deemed compensable because the hazard from an idiopathic fall was increased by the work-connected necessity of standing on an elevated platform).

. - Compensability of an idiopathic-fall injury is determined by measuring the force of hazard from work-connected risks on the impact of the fall. The impact of the fall is determined by the conditions of the perimeter of the fall and the distance from which claimant worked above the floor. When the claimant is at a great distance from the floor, it is the work environment that increases the force of trauma on the employee's body.

. The claimant's lawyer did not view her burden in a similar manner. The lawyer's position was that an indication of danger peculiar to the workplace would suffice to give support to an award. In other words, the claimant proceeded on the theory that a fall onto an employer's appliance is per se compensable.

. A fall upon a familiar, ordinary object in the workplace premises fails to show that the ambient dangers at the locus in guo stood elevated to a heightened degree the risks from an internally (and spontaneously) induced worker's fall. An idiopathic fall onto some ordinary, common object in the workplace is distinguishable from an injury that occurs to a worker who is positioned at some highly elevated work station or close to some moving or nonmoving machinery peculiar to the workplace environment. The latter objects appreciably elevate exposure to danger from trauma. The record here is utterly barren of risks producing a heightened danger from work-connected forces.

. The "alteration in the kind of injury" means here likely exposure to thermal harm (from heat), as distinguished from a traumatic injury caused by one's fall to the floor.

. A fall onto a coffee maker at most might add the possibility of a thermal injury. An idiopathic fall typically causes harm from a traumatic impact.

. See the provisions of 85 O.S.Supp.1997 § 3 (10), supra note 5.

. 1985 OK 91, ¶ 12, 709 P.2d 1050, 1053. Fox held (a) that every employee in travel for the master remains in the course of employment throughout the trip-except only during a departure on a purely personal errand-and (b) that every injury which occurs in travel, whether attributable to a work-related or personal hazard, is compensable. Id. at 1053.

. See the provisions of 85 O.S.Supp.1997 § 3 (10), supra note 5; Odyssey, supra note 5 at 120, at 313; Burns, supra note 3, at 15, at 291 ("The 'arising-out-of-employment' element of the claim requires that an injury be employment-related, as opposed to one stemming from a purely personal risk .... the record must show that ... {the harm] was causally related to the risks incident to his mission for the employer"); 1 A. Larson & L. Larson, Larson's Workers' Compensation Law § 9.01(1), at 9-2 (1999) ("the basic rule ... is that the effects of ... [an idiopathic] fall are compensable if the employment places the employee in a position increasing the dangerous effects of such a fall, such as on a height, near machinery or sharp corners, or in a moving vehicle".

. The court relies on Larson, supra note 9, § 9.01[2](2010), which states in pertinent part that "idiopathic falls onto such familiar household objects as tables and bookcases are compen-sable." For this notion Larson cites decisions from New York, Georgia, West Virginia, Florida, Utah, and Missouri.

. Fidelity to this State's statutory law requires that we reject out-of-hand Larson's inclusion of holdings (from a small number of jurisdictions) to support the notion that idiopathic falls upon familiar objects" are compensable.

. "Under the positional risk doctrine, an injury may be said to arise out of employment if it would not have occurred but for the fact that the conditions or obligations of the employment placed claimant in the position where he was injured by a neutral force, meaning by "neutral" neither personal to the claimant nor distinctly associated with the employment." A. LARSEN, The Positional Risk Doctrine in Workmen's Compensation, 1973 DUKE LJ. 761. [emphasis added]. Burns, supra note 3 at 291.

. 1995 OK 58, 903 P.2d 288.

. For the terms of 85 0.S.Supp.1997 § 3 (10), see supra note 5.

. - For the Fox holding, see supra note 22.

. The legislative intent in amending the terms of 85 0.$.1981 § 3 (10) was doubtless to require that the source of the employee's injury be from a work-related, rather than a purely personal, risk, No longer may an injury be viewed as compensable solely because the worker, while in the course of employment, came to be exposed to some risk of harm that is not shown to be work-connected.