The Missouri Supreme Court on May
29, 2012 said that an employee who was injured in an office kitchen after
making coffee is not entitled to workers' compensation benefits.
The Court said that the employee
was not entitled to workers’ compensation benefits because she failed to show
that her injury arose out of and in the course of her employment.
The plaintiff, Sandy Johme, was
employed by St. John’s Mercy Healthcare as a billing representative. Her work
duties included tying charges at a computer in an office. While being
"clocked in", Johme went to the office kitchen for a cup of coffee.
Typically, employees make a new pot if they empty it.
Johme was injured in a fall that
occurred in the kitchen after she made a pot of coffee to replace the now empty
pot. She was wearing sandals with a thick heel and a flat bottom, with a
one-inch thick sole. After making a new pot of coffee she twisted her foot and
fell on the floor. The floor was clean of trash, or any irregularities or
hazards.
After her fall, Johme reported on
her office’s injury report that her fall occurred when she turned to walk back
to her desk. However, she didn't remember exactly if she was turning to go to
the counter or turning to leave the room. Johme stated: "I don’t think I
could have been leaving the room because I would have went to my left. I
must’ve been going to the counter to throw something away or something I
guess.”
After the fall Johme was taken by
ambulance to the emergency room. Medical records in the hospital indicated that
she reported she tripped at work because of the shoes she was wearing.
After suffering a fracture to her
right hip and pelvis, Johme sought workers' compensation benefits related to
the fall. However the administrative law judge denied her claim. The ALJ wrote
that, she was not performing her regular work duties at the time of her fall at
work. "She just fell and she would have been exposed to the same hazard or
risk in her normal (non-employment) life.”
Johme then appealed to the Labor
and Industrial Relations Commission, which reversed the ALJ’s decision.
The commission found that Johme's
injury was compensable after applying the "personal comfort doctrine"
together with a state law requirement. The commission noted that Johme's act of
making coffee was "incidental to and related to her employment."
The woman was awarded with
temporary total disability payments, past medical expenses and permanent
partial disability payments.
The Commission pointed out that
case law had historically recognized a workers’ compensation doctrine referred
to as the “personal comfort doctrine,” which provided that workers’
compensation benefits could still be available to an employee who was injured
when tending to a basic personal need while at work. St. John's appealed.
St. John's contends the
commission erred in awarding benefits to Johme because the award was not
supported by sufficient competent evidence.
The state's high court, in its
14-page ruling, agreed, and reversed the commission's decision in favor of St.
John's.
Justice Mary R. Russell wrote:
"In Johme's case, the Commission erred in focusing its assessment on
whether Johme's activity of making coffee was incidental to her employment. The
evidence did not link her act of making coffee as the cause of her injury and
fall. Instead, the issue in Johme's case was whether the cause of her injury --
turning and twisting her ankle and falling off her shoe -- had a causal connection
to her work activity other than the fact that it occurred in her office's
kitchen while she was making coffee,"
Therefore Johme's injuries were
not found compensable, and she was not entitled to the to workers’ compensation
benefits.
Work related injuries happen
every day. The injuries involve sprains, strains, tears, falls, back injuries,
etc. Overall more than 337 million accidents happen on the job each year,
resulting in physical and mental injury of the workers.
After any work related injury the
first thing to do is to report the accident to the manager. Make sure that you
report what happened exactly as it happened. This report will be one of the
main documents in court.
Hiring a personal injury lawyer
is the next thing to do. Make sure that the lawyer knows how to handle injury
cases.
Paul A. Samakow is an attorney licensed in Maryland and Virginia,
and has been practicing since 1980. He represents injury victims and
routinely battles insurance companies and big businesses that will not accept
full responsibility for the harms and losses they cause. He can be reached at
any time by calling 1-866-SAMAKOW (1-866-726-2569), via email, or through his website. He is also available to
speak to your group on numerous legal topics. Paul is the featured legal
analyst on the Washington Times Radio, on the Andy Parks show, on
Wednesdays at 5:15 P.M., and he is a columnist on the Washington Times Communities.
His book The 8 Critical Things Your Auto Accident Attorney Won't
Tell You is free to Maryland and Virginia residents and can be obtained by
ordering it on his website; others can obtain it on Amazon.
