Court Opinion

ID: 9783974
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:34:33.626556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:46.286317
License: Public Domain

RICHARD B. TEITELMAN, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Johme should receive worker’s compensation benefits because her injury was caused by a work-related risk.
The dispositive issue is whether Johme’s injury resulted “from a hazard or risk unrelated to the employment to which [she] would have been equally exposed outside of and unrelated to the employment in normal nonemployment life.” Section 287.020.3(2)(b).1 The plain language of section 287.020.3(2)(b) dictates a two-step analysis. The first step is to determine whether the hazard or risk is related or unrelated to the employment. If the risk is related to employment, the employee is entitled to compensation and the equal exposure analysis does not apply. If, however, the risk is unrelated to employment, the statute requires an analysis of whether the risk is one to which the employee would have been exposed equally in normal nonemployment life.
In this case, the principal opinion concludes that Johme showed that the act of making coffee was work-related but failed to show that the injury sustained while making coffee was caused by a risk related to her employment. In other words, the principal opinion draws a bright-line distinction between an injury that merely happens while one is working and an injury that is caused by working. This distinction is not convincing when, as in this case, the injury occurs during the performance of a work-related task. The work-related task and the injury are inextricably entwined. The fact that the injury occurred while one is working'is, in most cases, the necessary factual predicate for showing that the injury is work-related.
As the principal opinion notes, Johme was injured while performing a work-related task. The most logical conclusion to draw from that fact is that her injury resulted from a work-related risk. As noted above, if the risk is related to employment, the employee is entitled to compensation and the equal exposure analysis does not apply. Under this analysis, the *513commission’s award of workers’ compensation benefits should be affirmed. Under the principal opinion’s analysis, office workers, retail clerks, computer programmers and others in relatively sedentary professions will be barred from obtaining workers’ compensation benefits when they are injured while performing many of their work-related tasks. While the 2005 amendments certainly were drafted to limit worker’s compensation awards, there is nothing in the plain language of section 287.020 that necessitates such a restrictive analysis.

. References to section 287.020.3(2) are to RSMo Supp.2011.