Cedar Rapids Community School v. Cady

• Decision Date: 25 April 1979
• Docket Number: No. 61759,61759
• Citation: 278 N.W.2d 298
• Parties: CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY SCHOOL and Bituminous Casualty Corporation, Appellants, v. Reginald DeWayne CADY, Deceased, Roberta Kay Cady, widow, and Iowa Industrial Commissioner, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 298

278 N.W.2d 298

CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY SCHOOL and Bituminous Casualty Corporation, Appellants, v. Reginald DeWayne CADY, Deceased, Roberta Kay Cady, widow, and Iowa Industrial Commissioner, Appellees.

No. 61759.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

April 25, 1979.

Rehearing Denied May 24, 1979.

John A. McClintock and William D. Scherle of Hansen, Wheatcraft & McClintock, Des Moines, for appellants.

William D. Martin of Fisher, Yarowsky, Martin, Ehrhart & Redmond, Cedar Rapids, for appellees.

Considered en banc.

McCORMICK, Justice.

Roberta Kay Cady claims workers' compensation death benefits based upon the killing of her husband Reginald DeWayne Cady by Graydon Caslavka on November 1, 1974. The main question in this appeal is one of first impression in Iowa. It is whether an injury sustained by an employee from an on-the-job assault by a deranged co-employee arises out of employment within the meaning of the workers' compensation law. The industrial commissioner and district court held the death to be compensable. Upon the employer and insurer's appeal, we affirm.

We are bound by the commissioner's findings of fact because they are supported by substantial evidence.

Decedent and Caslavka were employed as janitors by the Cedar Rapids Community School District. Cady had worked for the district three months and had been assigned to Harding School for two weeks. Caslavka had worked there for one month.

The two men had no contact outside of work and little contact at work. However, unknown to the employer and Cady, Caslavka was afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia accompanied by delusions of persecution. He believed a "hit man" was after him to avenge his misconduct in real and imagined past sexual affairs. On the day before the killing, Caslavka decided Cady was the hit man. This was based upon misinterpreting something Cady said and because he thought Cady "looked bug-eyed" at him. On the day of the killing Cady almost collided with Caslavka's car while driving into the school parking lot on his arrival at work. After parking his car, Cady said, "I almost got you that time" and, according to Caslavka, "looked bug-eyed" at him again.

Caslavka then took a pistol from his car and shot Cady, fatally wounding him. Subsequent psychiatric examinations established that Caslavka's conduct was wholly caused by an insane delusion.

Before holding that Cady's death arose out of his employment the industrial commissioner exhaustively reviewed the evidence and applicable law. After discussing the evidence, he concluded, "Medical testimony shows that Cady's employment environment placed him in contact with a co-employee who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia accompanied by delusions of persecution."

The commissioner noted that the majority of jurisdictions allow recovery in such cases. They do so on the basis of the analogy between a latent defect in a machine which breaks down and causes injury and an unforeseen mental disorder which causes a co-employee to run amuck and cause injury. In both situations the occurrence is viewed as a natural incident of the work because it is a rational consequence of a hazard to which the employment exposed the injured employee.

The district court adopted this reasoning in affirming the commissioner's decision.

In seeking reversal, the employer and insurer urge two contentions. One is that the commissioner and district court erred in holding Cady's death arose "out of" his employment. The other is that they erred in failing to deny the claim on the ground the death was caused by the willful act of a third party.

In keeping with the humanitarian objective of the workers' compensation statute, we apply it broadly and liberally. The legislation is primarily for the benefit of the worker and the worker's dependents. Its beneficent purpose is not to be defeated by reading something into it which is not there, or by a narrow and strained construction. Disbrow v. Deering Implement Co., 233 Iowa 380, 392, 9 N.W.2d 378, 384 (1943). Nonetheless, we are bound by the requirements of the statute. Halstead v. Johnson's Texaco, 264 N.W.2d 757, 759 (Iowa 1978).

The statute requires payment of compensation "for any and all personal injuries sustained by an employee arising out of and in the course of the employment." § 85.3(1), The Code 1979.

The employer and insurer admit that Cady was killed "in the course of" his employment. This element refers to the time, place and circumstances of the injury. An injury occurs in the course of employment when it is within the period of employment at a place the employee may reasonably be, and while he is doing his work or something incidental to it. McClure v. Union, et al. Counties, 188 N.W.2d 283, 287 (Iowa 1971).

Defendants deny that Cady's injury arose "out of" his employment. This element refers to the cause and origin of an injury. Id. The injury must be a natural incident of the work. This means it must be a rational consequence of a hazard connected with the employment. Musselman v. Central Telephone Co., 261 Iowa 352, 355, 154 N.W.2d 128, 130 (1967); Burt v. John Deere Tractor Works, 247 Iowa 691, 700, 73 N.W.2d 732, 737 (1956). The dispute here concerns whether the risk of attack by Caslavka was a hazard connected with Cady's employment.

Defendants also rely on the affirmative defense provided in section 85.16(3). It precludes recovery for an injury caused "(b)y the willful act of a third party directed against the employee for reasons personal to such employee."

I. Did the death arise out of Cady's employment? Most jurisdictions which have considered the question have held that an injury from an on-the-job assault by a deranged co-employee arises out of employment. See 1 A. Larson, Law of Workmen's Compensation § 11.32(a), at 3-224 (1978) ("If claimant is assaulted by a co-employee who becomes irresponsible because of insanity, the great majority of decisions hold that the injury arose out of the employment, and it is immaterial whether or not the employer had knowledge of the assailant's condition or propensities."); 82 Am.Jur.2d Workmen's Compensation § 330, at 128 (1976) ("When an employee goes insane and kills or attacks a fellow employee the injury or death is compensable."); 99 C.J.S. Workmen's Compensation § 227, at 771 (1958) ("Where the employee is at his place of work when assaulted by an insane person, his injuries are compensable as arising out of, and in the course of, his employment . . . .").

The leading case is Anderson v. Security Building Co., 100 Conn. 373, 123 A. 843 (1924). Like the present case, it involved the shooting of one janitor by another upon an insane impulse. Connecticut, like Iowa, defined "arising out of" to mean that the injury must be a natural incident of the employment. In applying the statute, the court reasoned as follows:

When an employer puts an employee at work on a machine, although the employer may have exercised all reasonable care to provide that it is safe, but which, without fault on his part, has a latent defect, which causes it to break down and injure the employee, the injury is unquestionably one arising out of a condition of his employment. It is immaterial, under the act, whether the employer knew or ought to have known of the existence of the dangerous condition. So, where a fellow servant by his negligence injures another employee, compensation is due for the injury, since it arose from a condition of the employment, to wit, the possibility of such negligence of a fellow servant.

The knowledge of the employer as to the liability of the fellow servant to be negligent is immaterial. Such liability is a condition attending the employment.

Whenever an employer puts his employees at work with fellow servants the conditions actually existing, apart from the possibility of willful assaults by a fellow servant independent of the employment, which result in injury to a fellow employee, are a basis for compensation under the implied contract of that act. So in this case, although the employer may not have had knowledge actual or constructive that Markus, a fellow servant of the plaintiff, was insane and liable to run amuck, yet such liability of Markus to run amuck was in fact a condition under which the plaintiff was employed on the night in question, and, if such condition of Markus caused an injury to the plaintiff, as it did, then the injury to the plaintiff arose out of his employment as truly as if it had arisen from the negligence of Markus in doing his work.

It is the actual conditions under which the employment is carried on that is important; not the conditions under which parties know or suppose that it is carried on. The possibility that a fellow servant may be or become insane and run amuck is a condition under which one employed with fellow servants is required to perform his work.

100 Conn. at 376-377, 123 A. at 844-845.

Most other jurisdictions which have confronted the question have reached the same result using similar reasoning. See Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. v. Hoage, 66 App.D.C. 160, 85 F.2d 417 (1936); Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. v. Cardillo, 72 App.D.C. 52, 112 F.2d 11, Cert. denied, 310 U.S. 649, 60 S.Ct. 1100, 84 L.Ed. 1415 (1940); Toler v. Industrial Commission, 22 Ariz.App. 365, 527 P.2d 767 (1974) (applying the principle to an attack by an intoxicated co-employee); Pacific Employers Insurance Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission, 139 Cal.App.2d 260, 293 P.2d 502 (1956); London Guarantee & Accident Co. v. McCoy, 97 Colo. 13, 45 P.2d 900 (1935); Chadwick v. White Provision Co., 82 Ga.App. 249, 60 S.E.2d 551 (1950); Mayo v. Safeway Stores Inc., 93 Idaho 161, 457 P.2d 400 (1969); Louie v. Bamboo Gardens, 67 Idaho 469, 185 P.2d 712 (1947); Cummings v. United Resort Hotels, Inc., 85 Nev. 23, 449 P.2d 245 (1969); Howard v. Harwood's Restaurant Co., 43 N.J.Super. 301, 128 A.2d 727, Aff'd, 25 N.J. 72, 135 A.2d 161 (1957); Crotty v. Driver-Harris Co., 45...