This important case involved statutory interpretation to
sort out what the legislature meant when it redefined “accident”. “Section 287.020.2 defines "accident" as
"an unexpected traumatic event or unusual strain identifiable by time and
place of occurrence and producing at the time objective symptoms of an injury
caused by a specific event during a single work shift.”
The legislature did not define key terms in the definition
of “accident” like “unusual” and told the courts to disregard everything they
said in the past by abrogating prior judicial interpretations. Larson's treatise explains that "unusual" can have several different meanings depending on what is being compared. The court noted it disagreed with the policy
behind the reform and clearly decided to do something about it even though the
statutory argument was never properly preserved in the brief. The majority decouples the definition and finds proof of strain does not require proof of an "event."
Missouri case law
before 1983 required proof of an unusual event.
The dissent concluded that reform
brought the state back to a pre-1983 standard to prove unusual events before Wolfgeher v. Wagner Cartage Service, Inc., 646 S.W.2d 781 (Mo. banc 1983).
The majority found what matters is the fact that an injury occurred and not what preceded it.
Claimant described an activity (lifting) that was identifiable by a time and place and causally related to his medical condition. It did not reach the issue whether the facts also established an unusual traumatic event. It rejected the defense that claimant must show an abnormal activity or abnormal performance of a normal activity. The court relied upon Pattengill v Gen Motors Corp., 845 S.W.2d 630 (Mo. App. 1992) (a pre-reform case) which it finds to have analogous facts.
Claimant described an activity (lifting) that was identifiable by a time and place and causally related to his medical condition. It did not reach the issue whether the facts also established an unusual traumatic event. It rejected the defense that claimant must show an abnormal activity or abnormal performance of a normal activity. The court relied upon Pattengill v Gen Motors Corp., 845 S.W.2d 630 (Mo. App. 1992) (a pre-reform case) which it finds to have analogous facts.
Claimant described an
immediate onset of symptoms that his shoulder popped and he had difficulty
moving his arm. The concurring opinion
found the majority used circular reasoning and that the legislature’s use of “unusual”
meant something more than a worker experienced an unusual manifestation of symptoms
after a usual activity.
The case clearly ease the burden to
prove accident. Medical causation of injury by
accident was not disputed in this case.
The court also affirmed an award of compensation and found
claimant had a compensable accident when he stepped on a frozen clod of dirt
and fell. Claimant in 2008 sprained his
knee when his knee popped, and then it popped again when his co-workers helped
him up.
The employer asserted claimant did not have an accident to
his knee because he did not prove the statutory requirement under 287.020.3(2)(b)
that the injury “does not come from a hazard or risk unrelated to the
employment to which workers would have been equally exposed outside of and
unrelated to the employment in normal non-employment life.”
The employer asserts that claimant lives on a farm that
farms have dirt, and he could have the same risk of falling over dirt away from
the work. The Court found that
287.020.3(2) (b) under strict construction does not allow a defense based of
the same general hazard but only of the same hazard at the same location. Alternatively, the Commission found no
evidence of non-occupational “equal” exposure.
Claimant is required only to show
that he was exposed to an unsafe condition as a function of his
employment. It is then the employer’s
burden as an affirmative defense to show that he had equal exposure to the same
place and the same hazard when he was not working such as being exposed to the same ice on the same lot or the same crack on the same street. Duever v All Outdoor, 371 S.W.3d 863 (Mo. App. 2012). This becomes an impossible defense when claimant when the claimant in his capacity as a non-worker would not have access to space within the employer’s exclusive control. It becomes the employer’s defense to show equal exposure “to disprove the prima facie case already made by Young.”
The court makes a semantic distinction of injuries that occur because someone is working and not merely while they are working.
Atty: Allen, Friel
The court makes a semantic distinction of injuries that occur because someone is working and not merely while they are working.
Atty: Allen, Friel
