Court Opinion

ID: 9705476
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:08:29.042811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:11.673793
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE McCULLOUGH, dissenting: Employee argues that the trial court should be affirmed and that a basis therefor is Memorial Medical Center v. Industrial Com. (1978), 72 Ill. 2d 275, 381 N.E.2d 289. Memorial Medical Center was limited to the facts of that particular case and the subsequent holdings of the supreme court in Caterpillar Tractor Co. v. Industrial Com. (1980), 83 Ill. 2d 213, 414 N.E.2d 740, Greater Peoria Mass Transit District v. Industrial Com. (1980), 81 Ill. 2d 38, 405 N.E.2d 796, and Branch v. Industrial Com. (1983), 95 Ill. 2d 268, 447 N.E.2d 828, are consistent with the facts presented in this case and as argued, mandate a reversal. In Greater Peoria, the employee, after she returned from work, started to put public schedules and transfers on a window ledge. As she went to put them up in the window, the transfers and schedules fell on the floor, she leaned over and when she did so, she said she hurt her back and fell against something and hit her shoulder. The supreme court in Greater Peoria stated, “An injury is accidental within the Act if a workman’s physical structure, whatever it may be, gives way under the stress of one’s usual labor, and claimants can recover on their own testimony without corroboration.” (Greater Peoria Mass Transit District v. Industrial Com. (1980), 81 Ill. 2d 38, 41, 405 N.E.2d 796.) The supreme court went on to say, however: “The employer correctly argues, however, that because she had dislocated her shoulder before and was subject to repeated subluxations (where the shoulder partially came out but did not dislocate) prior to the incident at issue, her injury was a result of normal activity rather than a risk incidental to her employment. The surgeon indicated that any episode of minor trauma — reaching for a cigarette or combing hair or turning over in bed while asleep — could have caused her shoulder to dislocate and that her shoulder was a ‘time bomb’ which would go off at an unpredictable time.” 81 Ill. 2d 38, 41-42, 405 N.E.2d 796. In reversing the Industrial Commission’s decision in Greater Peoria, the court stated: “[Bjecause neither qualitative nor quantitative risks to the claimant were shown to be greater as a result of her employment, the Commission’s determination that this injury arose out of her employment was contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence.” 81 Ill. 2d 38, 43, 405 N.E.2d 796. In the instant case, just as in Greater Peoria, the employee had a past record of a bad back. The fact that the bad back history indicates a prior accident at work which was the subject matter of a separate claim does not change the result to be rendered. The act of bending over as occurred under the circumstances of this case is not compensable and the circuit court’s confirmation of the Industrial Commission decision should be reversed. The most recent supreme court decision in this area, Branch v. Industrial Com. (1983), 95 Ill. 2d 268, 447 N.E.2d 828, cited Greater Peoria and confirmed the position taken in Greater Peoria when it said in Branch: “This court noted that in order for the injury to be compensable, there must be a showing that the cause is connected to the employment or incidental to it and that more is required than the fact of an occurrence at the employer’s place of work.” Branch v. Industrial Com. (1983), 95 Ill. 2d 268, 271, 447 N.E.2d 828.