Employee Not Entitled to Workers' Compensation Benefits After Fall in Office Kitchen.

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.