Flanner v. Tulsa Public Schools

• Decision Date: 12 February 2002
• Docket Number: No. 95,223.,95,223.
• Citation: 2002 OK 8,41 P.3d 972
• Parties: Inetta FLANNER, Petitioner, v. TULSA PUBLIC SCHOOLS and the Workers' Compensation Court, Respondents.
• Court: Oklahoma Supreme Court

41 P.3d 972

2002 OK 8

Inetta FLANNER, Petitioner, v. TULSA PUBLIC SCHOOLS and the Workers' Compensation Court, Respondents.

No. 95,223.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

February 12, 2002.

As Corrected February 13, 2002.

Susan Jones, Wilson Jones, P.C., Tulsa, OK, Attorney for Petitioner.

Catharine Bashaw, Rosenstein, Fist & Ringold, Tulsa, OK, Attorney for Respondent.

SUMMERS, J.,

¶ 1 The issue presented by this review proceeding is whether an employee may recover worker's compensation benefits for burn injuries sustained at work when she fell against a large coffee pot while suffering an epileptic seizure. The trial judge found the injury was not compensable and the. Court of Civil Appeals sustained the order, and we have previously granted certiorari. We find that the employee is entitled to worker's compensation benefits. We vacate the opinion of the Court of Civil Appeals, and remand the matter to the trial court.

¶ 2 Inetta Flanner was employed by the Tulsa County Public School District as a child nutritionist. Among other things, her job required her to get supplies out of the cafeteria for use in the snack bar where she worked. The record shows that on the day in question she had gone to the cafeteria to get foam plates for the children's snacks where she suffered an epileptic seizure, and fell into a commercial coffee pot and severely burned her right arm. It shows also that Ms. Flanner had failed to take her anti-seizure medication as prescribed.

¶ 3 Our statutory scheme requires that an employer must provide Worker's Compensation benefits for an accidental personal injury sustained by an employee "arising out of and in the course of the employment, without regard to fault as a cause" of the injury. 85 O.S. Supp.1997-11. The two elements are distinct and are not to be understood as synonymous. The phrase "in the course of" relates to the time and place or circumstances under which the injury was sustained, while the phrase "arising out of" contemplates a causal connection between injury and the risks incident to employment. Thomas v. Keith Hensel Optical Labs, 1982 OK 120, 653 P.2d 201.

¶ 4 Whether a claimant's injury "arises out of" and is "in the course of" employment is generally a question of fact for the Worker's Compensation court, and the "any competent evidence" standard of review applies. However, where there are no disputed facts, the question presented is one of law. City of Edmond v. Monday, 1995 OK 132, 910 P.2d 980. Here the undisputed facts do not support the order denying compensation to Ms. Flanner.

¶ 5 The employer School District does not dispute that Ms. Flanner was injured at work while performing her job. It concedes that she was "in the course of" her employment, but contends that her injury was not the result of a work related accident because it did not "arise out of" her job, but rather resulted from an idiopathic condition, her epilepsy, which was a personal risk not related to her employment. The District argues that there was no causal nexus between her work activity and her injury. It also contends that her seizure was brought on by her willful negligence in failing to take her medication properly and that her work activity did not involve the coffee pot.¹ The Court of Civil Appeals sustained the order denying worker's compensation benefits.

¶ 6 Ms. Flanner seeks our review. She contends that her injury comes within the statutory parameters of risk-connectedness of 85 O.S. Supp.1997-3 (10)(a), requiring that "[o]nly injuries having as their source a risk not purely personal but one that is causally connected with the conditions of employment shall be deemed to arise out the employment." She argues that the presence of the hot coffee pot was a condition of her employment which contributed to her injury, and that if she hadn't been at work performing her duties she would not have been burned by the employer's coffee pot when she fell.

¶ 7 As the following discussion of our case law makes clear, we have adopted the generally accepted rule that where a pre-existing idiopathic condition is the sole cause of a worker's injury and no other factor operates to contribute to the injury, no compensation is awarded. But where an injury results from a concurrence of an idiopathic condition and some hazard of employment, compensation is allowed. Compare Halliburton Services v. Alexander, 1976 OK 16, 547 P.2d 958, and Bittman v. Boardman Co., 1977 OK 32, 560 P.2d 967.

¶ 8 Professor Larsen states that there is now general agreement that the effects of an idiopathic fall are compensable if the conditions of employment place the employee in a position increasing the dangerous effects of a fall. These factors include such things as the employee being on a height, being near machinery or sharp corners, or in a moving vehicle, as well as falling into such familiar objects such as tables and bookcases. A. Larsen, Workers' Compensation Law § 9.01(2001).

¶ 9 The School District's reliance on our decision in Marion Machine Foundry & Supply Co. v. Redd, 115 Okl. 30, 241 P. 175 (1925), as authority requiring us to uphold the denial of compensation to Ms. Flanner, is not persuasive. It is true that in Redd we vacated an award of compensation to an employee who was injured at work when he suffered an idiopathic fall resulting from an epileptic seizure which caused him to fall into a fire. The syllabus by the Court does appear to announce an unqualified rule against allowing compensation for idiopathic falls, it provides:

Where the injury suffered was the result of a fall caused by an attack of epilepsy, such injury is not one arising out of the employment, and not compensable under the Workmen's Compensation Law (Comp. St.1921, § 7284, subd. 7).

¶ 10 The body of the opinion, however, discloses that the Court was not so absolute in its position. The Court discussed at some length the English case of Wicks v. Dowell, 2 K.B. 225(1905), which set forth an exception to the rule against compensation under proper circumstances. In Wicks, the Court granted an employee compensation for injuries from a idiopathic fall where he had received an injury which he would not have suffered but for a situation peculiar to the employment. The court found his job requirement created a peculiar hazard connected with the place of the fall. Claimant's job was to unload coal from a ship by means of a hydraulic crane and regulate and control the bucket's movements into and out of the hold. To carry out this duty he was required to stand in a dangerous position close to the edge of the hatchway, where he had an epileptic seizure and fell through the hatchway into the hold sustaining serious injuries. The Redd Court took notice of this exception to the rule against compensability and distinguished the holding in Wicks, explaining that under the facts of the instant case there was no peculiar hazard connected with the place of the fall or service rendered. In doing so, the Court recognized and implicitly predicted what would become the generally accepted rule allowing compensation when a condition of employment contributes to the risk or aggravates the injury.

¶ 11 In McKeever Drilling Co. v. Egbert, 1934 OK 763, 40 P.2d 32, 33-34, the Court revisited Redd and Wicks in considering whether to award compensation to an employee who fell when he suffered a heatstroke and struck his head against the machinery he had been working on. Addressing the employer's contention that the heat stroke was the first step in the line of causation of claimant's injury and the fall therefore resulted from an incident not associated with the employment, the Court followed Wicks, and held that the injuries from an idiopathic fall arise out of employment and are compensable when a condition peculiar to the employment increases the hazard, and that if it were not for that condition, the person would not have suffered the injury. The Court quoted extensively from Wicks, including the following explanation:

How does it come about in the present case that the accident arose out of the employment? Because by the conditions of his employment the workman was bound to stand on the edge of what I may style a precipice, and if in that position he was seized with a fit he would almost necessarily fall over. If that is so, the accident was caused by his necessary proximity to the precipice, for the fall was brought about by the necessity for his standing in that position. Upon the authorities, I think the case is clear; and accident does not cease to be such because its remote cause was the idiopathic condition of the injured man; we must dissociate that idiopathic condition from the other facts and remember that he was obliged to run the risk by the very nature of his employment, and that the dangerous fall was brought about by the conditions of that employment.

¶ 12 The McKeever Court concluded:

In our opinion, under the facts in this case, the hazard of receiving an injury such as is claimed herein is peculiarly incident to the presence of the engine in close proximity to employee and his duties. He was where he was required to be and was doing the work he was ordered to do, and doing it in a manner satisfactory to his immediate superior, and by probably the only method by which it could be performed. . . . Persons seized with epilepsy, vertigo, sunstroke, or other sudden and overpowering attacks usually fall where they are, and it is the presence of machinery, or height, or some other condition peculiar to the employment which increases the hazard or injury, but for the presence of which condition peculiar to the employment the person so seized would suffer no greater hazard of additional injury than one not so situated. The hazard of an injury from falling against the engine was one incident to the proximity of the engine to claimant's work, and the injury actually received arose out of the employment.

¶ 13 In Moten v. Chandler Well Service,...