Hanson v. Reichelt, 88-1808

• Decision Date: 21 February 1990
• Docket Number: No. 88-1808,88-1808
• Citation: 452 N.W.2d 164
• Parties: Lloyd L. HANSON and Valora J. Hanson, Administrators of the Estate of Dennis L. Hanson, Deceased, Appellants, v. Sherman REICHELT, Employer, and Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, Insurance Carrier, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 164

452 N.W.2d 164

20 A.L.R.5th 952

Lloyd L. HANSON and Valora J. Hanson, Administrators of the Estate of Dennis L. Hanson, Deceased, Appellants, v. Sherman REICHELT, Employer, and Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, Insurance Carrier, Appellees.

No. 88-1808.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Feb. 21, 1990.

Reconsideration Denied March 21, 1990.

Nathan B. Updegraff and Steven J. Holwerda of Selby, Updegraff, Smith & Holwerda, Newton, for appellants.

E.J. Giovannetti and Valerie A. Fandel of Hopkins & Huebner, P.C., Des Moines, for appellees.

Considered by LARSON, P.J., and CARTER, LAVORATO, SNELL and ANDREASEN, JJ.

LAVORATO, Justice.

This appeal arises out of the death of a farm employee who suffered a heatstroke while working. The Iowa industrial commissioner denied benefits, finding that the employee's injury did not arise out of his employment. In making this finding, the commissioner applied the general public-increased risk rule, a rule this court first approved in a workers' compensation case involving heatstroke more than fifty years ago.

The district court affirmed the commissioner's decision. The administrators of the deceased employee's estate appealed; we transferred the case to the court of appeals. The court of appeals reversed and remanded the case to the agency on an issue the agency had not addressed. The employer and carrier filed an application for further review, which we granted.

We now adopt the actual risk rule in workers' compensation cases involving injuries from exposure to the elements. We think here, however, that the agency should be allowed to decide the liability issue in light of the rule we adopt today. So we affirm in part and vacate in part the decision of the court of appeals. We reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

On June 24, 1983, D. Van Maanen agreed to buy some hay from Sherman Reichelt. Reichelt had already baled some of the hay. The remainder of the hay sold to Van Maanen had to be baled, and all of the hay had to be stacked on a hayrack and transported from Riechelt's field.

Reichelt hired Dennis L. Hanson to help with the baling. When the baling operation began, the weather was very hot; the recorded temperature that day reached a high of 95 degrees.

At about 2:30 p.m. on June 24, Van Maanen's wife, Van Maanen, Reichelt, and Hanson began working in the field. Hanson's job was twofold: he stacked bales and drove empty and full hayracks to and from the field. Each bale weighed about sixty pounds. Hanson did this for about an hour and a half. But at no time did he work more than twenty-five minutes without a break.

At some point Hanson quit and sat down in the field. About thirty minutes later, Reichelt drove up in his pickup and found Hanson passed out.

Reichelt called for medical assistance; an ambulance arrived about 5:00 p.m. and took Hanson to a hospital in Newton. The doctors there determined that Hanson had suffered a heatstroke. Later Hanson was transferred to Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines where he underwent extensive treatment and finally died on July 18, 1983.

Hanson's father and mother were appointed administrators of their son's estate. As such the parents filed a petition with the Iowa Industrial Commission in June 1984. See Iowa Code § 85.26(4) (1983). They sought medical and death benefits from Reichelt and Reichelt's insurance carrier.

A deputy industrial commissioner in an arbitration decision found that Hanson's death did not arise out of his employment and denied benefits. The administrators appealed to the commissioner who affirmed. See Iowa Code § 86.24.

The administrators then filed in the district court a petition for judicial review of the commissioner's decision. The district court affirmed.

The administrators appealed from the district court's decision, and we transferred the case to the court of appeals. The court of appeals found that Hanson's death did arise out of his employment. So it reversed the judgment of the district court.

The court of appeals remanded the case to the agency for findings on an issue the agency had not addressed. That issue was whether medical services rendered following Hanson's cardiac arrest were reasonably necessary. The employer and carrier contended before the agency that Hanson was "brain dead" following the cardiac arrest. So, they argued, continued treatment after that was not necessary and therefore not compensable under Iowa Code section 85.27.

Reichelt and his carrier sought further review of the court of appeals decision, which we granted. The narrow issue we must decide is whether the agency properly applied the law when it found that Hanson's death did not arise out of his employment.

I. When we review a district court decision on the validity of agency action, we ask only whether the district court has correctly applied the law. Norland v. Iowa Dep't of Job Serv., 412 N.W.2d 904, 908 (Iowa 1987). The district court is itself acting in an appellate capacity to correct errors of law made by the agency. Id. In our review of the district court's action in such capacity, we merely apply the standards of Iowa Code section 17A.19(8) to the agency action to determine whether our conclusions are the same as those of the district court. Id. If our conclusions are the same, we must affirm. Id. Likewise, if our conclusions differ, we must reverse.

II. In these proceedings the administrators had the burden to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Hanson had suffered an injury that arose out of and in the course of his employment. McDowell v. Town of Clarksville, 241 N.W.2d 904, 907-08 (Iowa 1976). In the context of workers' compensation law, the concept of proximate cause is found in the words "out of." Crowe v. De Soto Consol. School Dist., 246 Iowa 402, 406, 68 N.W.2d 63, 65 (1955).

The words "in the course of" simply refer to the time, place, and circumstances of the injury. Id. So an injury occurs in the course of employment when it happens within the period of employment at a place the employee may reasonably be, and while the employee is doing work or something incidental to it. Cedar Rapids Community School Dist. v. Cady, 278 N.W.2d 298, 299 (Iowa 1979).

Both sides agree that Hanson's injury--the heatstroke--arose during the course of his employment. So, as we said, our sole issue is whether Hanson's injury arose out of his employment.

III. In the past this court addressed the issue whether a heatstroke is compensable in workers' compensation cases. See, e.g., Wax v. Des Moines Asphalt Paving Corp., 220 Iowa 864, 263 N.W. 333 (1935); West v. Phillips, 227 Iowa 612, 288 N.W. 625 (1939). In Wax an employee suffered a heatstroke while digging a trench in 100+ degree temperatures. The industrial commissioner allowed benefits, and the district court affirmed. Viewing the same facts, we held as a matter of law that the heatstroke did not arise out of the employment. In other words, there was no causal connection between the employment and the injury. Wax, 220 Iowa at 865-67, 263 N.W. at 334-35.

In reaching this conclusion, we adopted and applied the general public-increased risk rule which provides that

[i]f the employment brings with it no greater exposure to injurious results from natural causes, and neither contributes to produce these nor to aggravate their effect, as from lightning, severe heat or cold, than those to which persons generally in that locality, whether so employed or not, are equally exposed there is no causal connection between the employment and the injury. But where the employment brings a greater exposure and injury results, the injury does arise out of the employment.

Id. at 865-66, 288 N.W. at 334. Simply put, the rule permits recovery "only in cases where the [employee] is exposed to conditions of temperature unusual or more intense than those experienced by [employees] of the community in general." Id. at 866, 288 N.W. at 334.

Relying on the same rule, we reached an opposite result in West v. Phillips. There a bakery employee became ill while working the night shift. The employee died the next day. His doctor testified that the employee showed substantially all the symptoms of heat exhaustion. The doctor performed an autopsy. He found that the employee had severe heart trouble and that the heat exhaustion had hastened the employee's death. West, 227 Iowa at 614, 620, 288 N.W. at 629.

In West experts testified that heat infiltration from the tar roof, an inefficient fan inside, and artificial heat from the oven combined to make it 10 to 12 degrees hotter inside. During the day, the temperatures outside had reached 108. Id. at...