Doe v. South Carolina State Hosp.

• Decision Date: 15 October 1984
• Docket Number: No. 0428,0428
• Citation: 328 S.E.2d 652,285 S.C. 183
• Court: South Carolina Court of Appeals
• Parties: Jane DOE, Appellant, v. SOUTH CAROLINA STATE HOSPITAL, Respondent. . Heard

Page 652

328 S.E.2d 652

285 S.C. 183

Jane DOE, Appellant, v. SOUTH CAROLINA STATE HOSPITAL, Respondent.

No. 0428.

Court of Appeals of South Carolina.

Heard Oct. 15, 1984.

Decided April 1, 1985.

Charles E. Hill, of Turner, Padget, Graham & Laney, Columbia, for appellant.

Atty. Gen. T. Travis Medlock, Retired Atty. Gen. Daniel R. McLeod, Deputy Atty. Gen. Raymond G. Halford and Asst. Attys. Gen. Edwin E. Evans and Robert D. Cook, Columbia, for respondent.

SANDERS, Chief Judge:

Appellant brought this action in tort against the South Carolina State Hospital. The Honorable Samuel B. Mendenhall granted summary judgment in favor of the Hospital, holding appellant's "sole and exclusive remedy lies under Work[ers'] Compensation." We affirm, adopting, for the most part, the excellent order of Judge Mendenhall.

At the time of the event which gave rise to this action, appellant was employed by the South Carolina Department of Mental Health as a nursing supervisor at the South Carolina State Hospital. She alleges the agents and employees of the Hospital were negligent in allowing a mental patient to escape and later rape her while she was on duty, causing her to suffer severe mental injuries.

The record reveals that appellant also suffered serious physical injuries from the attack. She was bruised by the patient's slapping her, and she suffered a tear in her vaginal wall from the rape. Because of the vaginal wound, appellant lost a considerable amount of blood and had to undergo surgery to repair the tear. She remained under the care of a doctor for about a week, receiving medication both for her pain and her injury. As a result of these injuries, appellant missed 3 1/2 days from work. Although appellant filed no claim for Workers' Compensation benefits, her hospital and doctor bills amounting to over $800 were paid by the State Workers' Compensation Fund on a claim filed by her employer.

Section 42-1-540 of the 1976 Code of Laws of South Carolina, a part of the Workers' Compensation Act, provides:

The rights and remedies granted by this Title to an employee when he and his employer have accepted the provisions of this Title, respectively, to pay and accept compensation on account of personal injury or death by accident, shall exclude all other rights and remedies of such employee ... as against his employer, at common law or otherwise, on account of such injury, loss of service or death. (Emphasis added).

This provision is intended to bar all actions against an employer where a personal injury to an employee comes within the Act. It thus makes the Act the exclusive means of settling all such claims. Lowery v. Wade Hampton Co., 270 S.C. 194, 241 S.E.2d 556 (1978). ¹

Section 42-1-160 of the Act defines "injury" and "personal injury" as an "... injury by accident arising out of and in the course of employment...." Thus, the three criteria for determining whether an injury is compensable are (1) accident, (2) arising out of employment and (3) arising in the course of employment. As counsel for appellant conceded at oral argument before this court, the real dispute here involves the second criterion. Therefore, we shall address it at length after discussing the first and third.

An intentional assault upon an employee by a third person is an "accident" because it is unexpected when viewed from the employee's perspective. Thompson v. J.A. Jones Construction Co., 199 S.C. 304, 310, 19 S.E.2d 226 (1942). ² The incident which led to the rape of appellant was certainly unexpected from her point of view and constitutes an accident within the meaning of the Workers' Compensation Act.

An injury arises in the course of employment ... when it occurs within the period of the employment at a place where the employee reasonably may be in the performance of his duties, and while he is fulfilling those duties, or engaged in something incidental thereto.

Fowler v. Abbott Motor Co., 236 S.C. 226, 113 S.E.2d 737, 739 (1960). There is no question here that appellant was assaulted at her place of employment, during her working hours and while she was in the performance of her duties as a nursing supervisor in the Saunders Building on the Hospital's campus. Her complaint specifically pleads these facts. ³

Concerning the second criterion at issue in this case, it has been held that an injury

[A]rises "out of" the employment, when there is apparent to the rational mind upon consideration of all the circumstances, a causal connection between the conditions under which the work is required to be performed and the resulting injury.... [I]f the injury ... followed as a natural incident of the work and [would] have been contemplated by a reasonable person familiar with the whole situation as a result of the exposure occasioned by the nature of the employment, then it arises "out of" the employment.

Carter v. Penney Tire & Recapping Co., 261 S.C. 341, 200 S.E.2d 64, 65 (1973), quoting, Bridges v. Elite, Inc., 212 S.C. 514, 519, 48 S.E.2d 497, 498-499 (1948). Where an employee is assaulted by a third person, the assault arises out of the employment "... if the risk of assault is increased because of the nature of setting of the work...." Carter, 200 S.E.2d at 66, and Skipper v. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co., 271 S.C. 152, 246 S.E.2d 94, 96 (1978), citing, 1 A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation Law § 11 (1984). ⁴

Appellant argues that her injury did not arise out of her employment because none of her duties at the Hospital related to Clay, whom she contends was out to rape any woman. She further argues that once Clay escaped from the Hospital, all women in the area were at equal risk of harm by him. We are not persuaded by these arguments for the reasons set forth below.

In her complaint and deposition, appellant enumerates a wide variety of acts and omissions by the Hospital which she contends increased the risk of assault upon her "because of the nature or setting of the work." For example, she alleges her employer failed "to make the hospital campus secure from easy access by unauthorized persons" and failed "to provide sufficient security for ingress and egress from the campus." In addition, she maintains the Hospital required her "to work in an area without adequate visibility from other areas of the Saunders Building so she was susceptible to such an attack," and neglected "to provide an alarm system so that persons in such a position as [p]laintiff could alert security personnel in the event of an attack." She further alleges that inadequate security personnel and a lack of upgrading of security measures, as well as a failure "to keep a sufficient number of supervisors on duty in the building where [p]laintiff was working," contributed to the attack upon her. In her deposition, appellant testified that her working environment at the Hospital contributed to the occurrence of the rape. Her own pleadings and testimony defeat her argument that her injury did not arise out of her employment. See Elrod v. All, 243 S.C. 425, 134 S.E.2d 410 (1964) (parties are bound by their pleadings, and the allegations, statements or admissions contained therein are conclusive against the pleader).

Accordingly, in regard to the above criteria for compensability, we find no genuine issue of material fact which would have precluded the trial judge from granting the Hospital's motion for summary judgment. See Merritt v. Smith, 269 S.C. 301, 237 S.E.2d 366 (1977). ⁵

Appellant next argues that her case falls outside the scope of the Workers' Compensation Act because her injury did not result in a disability. In support of her argument, she cites Stewart v. McLellan's Stores Co., 194 S.C. 50, 9 S.E.2d 35 (1940) and Ritter v. Allied Chemical Corp., 295 F.Supp. 1360 (D.S.C.1968), aff'd, 407 F.2d 403 (4th Cir.1969). In response to this argument, we adopt the following portion of the trial judge's order, as slightly modified:

Appellant, in essence, argues that the additional mental trauma and humiliation which she has incurred as a result of this attack upon her may be segregated from the physical harm and compensated for in this tort action. She contends that "the essence of the impact of rape" is not the physical injury, but mental trauma. She further argues that she has suffered no "disability," as defined in the Workers' Compensation Act, which would entitle her to an actual compensation award. Her arguments must be rejected for the following reasons:

First, it is fundamental that if an accident arising out of and in the course of employment results in physical injury or trauma, and additionally, mental injuries are caused by the same accident, the remedy for all injuries lies solely under the Workers' Compensation Act. Illustrative is Professor Larson's statement that:

when there has been a physical accident or trauma, and claimant's disability is increased or prolonged by traumatic neurosis, conversion hysteria or hysterical paralysis, it is now uniformly held that the full disability including the effects of the neurosis is compensable. Dozens of cases, involving almost every conceivable kind of [mental injury] ... have accepted this rule.

1B A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation Law § 42.22 (1982).

This is the law in South Carolina. Where there are physical injuries, any accompanying mental injuries resulting from the same accident may not be segregated in an attempt to render the Act non-exclusive with respect to the mental stress. See Skipper v. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co., 246 S.E.2d at 94; cf., Lowery v. Wade Hampton Co., 241 S.E.2d at 556 (suit for loss of consortium barred). In the present case, appellant's efforts to characterize her injuries as "primarily" mental, as opposed to physical, must fail. See Kennedy v. Williamsburg County, 242 S.C. 477, 131 S.E.2d 512 (1963) (severe case of paranoid schizophrenia resulting from incident involving an assault upon plaintiff, a prison guard, by prisoners; injuries guard...