Hillsborough County School Bd. v. Williams

• Decision Date: 09 August 1990
• Docket Number: No. 89-3085,89-3085
• Citation: 565 So.2d 852
• Parties: 15 Fla. L. Weekly D2074 HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD and Poe Risk Management Services, Inc., Appellants, v. Sharon WILLIAMS, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 852

565 So.2d 852

15 Fla. L. Weekly D2074

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD and Poe Risk Management Services, Inc., Appellants, v. Sharon WILLIAMS, Appellee.

No. 89-3085.

District Court of Appeal of Florida,

First District.

Aug. 9, 1990.

Stephen M. Barbas of Mitcham, Weed, Barbas, Allen & Morgan, Tampa, for appellants.

William H. Yanger, Jr. of Yanger & Yanger, Tampa, for appellee.

SHIVERS, Chief Judge.

The E/C appeal the Judge of Compensation Claims' (JCC's) finding that claimant sustained an injury arising out of and in the course and scope of her employment. We remand for further disposition.

Claimant is a Hillsborough County school bus driver whose duties include cleaning the bus. In her July 10, 1989 deposition claimant recounted that on January 25, 1989, she was cleaning the bus, picking up paper off the floor, and when she reached to pick up one particular piece of paper she felt a pulling in her back. She said the paper was in front of her in the aisle. During this deposition she did not mention any impact associated with her injury. The details of the bus cleaning incident related by claimant during her deposition were similar to the details Doctors Brewer and Murphy recalled claimant related to them when they asked her about the history of her back pain. Claimant did not tell her doctors that she considered her back pain to be related to any impact. At hearing, however, claimant testified that she was picking up paper at the front of the bus near the glove compartment and when she straightened up she struck her back on the "rod of the bus."

As a general rule,

for an injury to arise out of and in the course of one's employment, there must be some causal connection between the injury and the employment or it must have had its origin in some risk incidental to or connected with the employment or that it flowed from it as a natural consequence. Another definition widely approved is that the injury must occur within the period of the employment at a place where the employee may reasonably be, and while he is reasonably fulfilling the duties of his employment or engaged in doing something incidental to it.

Hill v. Gregg, Gibson & Gregg, Inc., 260 So.2d 193, 195 (Fla.1972) (quoting Fidelity & Casualty Co. of New York v. Moore, 143 Fla. 103, 196 So. 495, 496 (1940)). In the instant case, even though claimant gave conflicting stories about the cause of her pain, the JCC accepted her testimony at least to the extent that he believed her injury occurred on the job. Specifically, the JCC wrote in his order that claimant "sustained an injury by accident arising out of and in the course of her employment ... when while bending over to pick up a piece of paper from the bus that she was cleaning out, she experienced pain in and about her low back upon arising at which time she may or may not have struck her back on a handrail."

However, as the E/C argue, the JCC did not address evidence in the record that claimant had a preexisting, idiopathic ¹ condition. Dr. Murphy testified that the CAT scan revealed slight bulging of the L5-S1 level which he said was degenerative in nature. Dr. Murphy also opined that claimant's condition was possibly related to trauma; but bending over to pick up a piece of paper, he considered, is the lowest level of normal daily physical activity. In his order, the JCC refers to Dr. Murphy's finding that claimant had a slightly bulged disc but he makes no reference to Dr. Murphy's opinion that such was the result of a degenerative condition. Claimant urges us to assume that the JCC's failure to discuss this...