Liberty Correctional Institute v. Yon, 94-3513

• Decision Date: 13 March 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-3513,94-3513
• Citation: 671 So.2d 194
• Parties: 21 Fla. L. Weekly D656 LIBERTY CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTE and Division of Risk Management, Appellants, v. Connie YON, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 194

671 So.2d 194

21 Fla. L. Weekly D656

LIBERTY CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTE and Division of Risk Management, Appellants, v. Connie YON, Appellee.

No. 94-3513.

District Court of Appeal of Florida,

First District.

March 13, 1996.

Rehearing Denied April 23, 1996.

An appeal from a workers' compensation order. Douglas Brown, Judge of Compensation Claims.

M. Kemmerly Thomas of McConnaughhay, Roland, Maida & Cherr, P.A., Tallahassee, for Appellants.

William G. Berzak, Orlando, and Bill McCabe of Shepherd, McCabe and Cooley, Longwood, for Appellee.

SHIVERS, Senior Judge.

Liberty Correctional Institute and the Division of Risk Management appeal the final order of the judge of compensation claims ruling compensable Connie Yon's post-traumatic stress disorder and fibromyalgia, and awarding her temporary total disability benefits and medical expenses for her treatment. Because we conclude that the order does not comport with the standard announced in City of Holmes Beach v. Grace, 598 So.2d 71 (Fla.1992), we are constrained to reverse.

The facts of this case are virtually undisputed. While Claimant was employed as a correctional officer working in the mail room at Liberty Correctional Institute, she was forced to endure the sexual advances of her superior. Her claim for benefits was predicated on a repetitive trauma theory of compensability arising from the sexual harassment that extended from late 1990 through the end of 1992 and included a single initiating instance of sexual intercourse followed by several episodes of sexual touching. In January 1993, Claimant attended a seminar for female correctional officers at which the women were encouraged to report any sexual abuse encountered on the job. Fortified by the assurances she received at the seminar, Claimant shortly thereafter filed a complaint against her superior for sexual harassment. ¹ She also began to seek medical and psychological treatment for depression and depression-related illnesses, and has not returned to work since March 1993.

In addition to filing a civil complaint in circuit court for sexual harassment, Claimant filed a claim, and later an amended claim, for workers' compensation benefits seeking a determination of the compensability of her alleged injuries stemming from the job-related sexual harassment, and the payment of various indemnity benefits and medical expenses. Claimant continued to receive treatment from a variety of physicians who ultimately diagnosed her condition as depression, anxiety consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder, and fibromyalgia. The latter condition was described by Dr. Alexander, one of Claimant's treating physicians specializing in the nonsurgical treatment of orthopedic disorders, as a pain amplification syndrome caused by sleep disturbance and the intense mental, psychological and emotional stress that Claimant was experiencing from her job situation.

At the hearing before the judge of compensation claims, the primary issue was whether there was evidence of a sufficient physical injury or trauma causally related to the sexual harassment to support a finding that Claimant's conditions are compensable under chapter 440, in light of the supreme court's decision in City of Holmes Beach v. Grace. In concluding that there was legally sufficient evidence of a compensable injury, the judge stated that he could not "construe the repeated physical assaults by [Claimant's superior] on [Claimant's] most private bodily areas to represent 'mere touching' or incidental contact." Accordingly, he ruled in favor of awarding Claimant benefits.

On appeal, LCI and the Division argue several points for reversal. However, having thoroughly reviewed the parties' respective analyses of these points, we conclude that all of them address the overriding issue of whether the evidence established a compensable injury or trauma. Accordingly, our analysis will focus on the statutory predicate for a finding of compensability.

Compensation is payable under chapter 440 to an employee if "disability or death results from an injury arising out of and in the course of employment." § 440.09, Fla.Stat. (1991). Subsection 440.02(17), Florida Statutes (1991), defines "injury" as meaning "personal injury or death by accident arising out of and in the course of employment, and such diseases or infection as naturally or unavoidably result from such injury." "Accident" is defined in subsection 440.02(1) as "only an unexpected or unusual event or result, happening suddenly," but in the very next sentence of that subsection, the legislature has deemed not to be an accident "[a] mental or nervous injury due to stress, fright or excitement only." It is this latter language upon which LCI and the Division focus in arguing that Claimant's medical and psychological conditions are not compensable because they were caused by stress alone.

Over time, Florida courts have extended the definition of "accident" to cover a broad range of workplace injuries. As the supreme court observed in Byrd v. Richardson- Greenshields Securities, Inc., 552 So.2d 1099 (Fla.1989), in an effort to construe liberally the workers' compensation statute, the term "accident" has been defined "well beyond the more limited definition suggested by the statutory language." Id. at 1100. As an example, the supreme court pointed to decisions from this court holding compensable severe emotional disorders temporally preceded by actual but relatively minor physical injuries at the workplace. See Sheppard v. City of Gainesville Police Department, 490 So.2d 972 (Fla. 1st DCA 1986); Prahl Bros., Inc. v. Phillips, 429 So.2d 386 (Fla. 1st DCA), rev. denied, 440 So.2d 353 (Fla.1983). However, without specifically addressing the propriety of the rationale expressed in Sheppard and Phillips, id. at 1101 n. 4, the supreme court in Byrd v. Richardson-Greenshields emphasized that purely emotional injuries are not compensable where no physical injury has occurred, "since the statute by its own terms excludes such matters." Id. at 1101.

Ultimately, the supreme court did address the propriety of the holdings in Sheppard and Phillips in City of Holmes Beach v. Grace, wherein it expressly disapproved of the logic of those decisions. In Grace the supreme court emphasized that "[a] mere touching cannot suffice as a physical injury." Id. at 74. As the court observed:

Where there has been a physical...