McAllister v. Ill. Workers' Comp. Comm'n
| Decision Date | 22 March 2019 |
| Docket Number | NO. 1-16-2747 WC,1-16-2747 WC |
| Citation | 2019 IL App (1st) 162747 WC,430 Ill.Dec. 434,126 N.E.3d 522 |
| Parties | Kevin MCALLISTER, Appellant, v. The ILLINOIS WORKERS' COMPENSATION COMMISSION et al. (North Pond, Appellee). |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
¶ 1 Claimant, Kevin McAllister, filed an application for adjustment of claim under the Workers' Compensation Act (Act) ( 820 ILCS 305/1 et seq. (West 2014)), seeking benefits for a knee injury he sustained on August 7, 2014, while he was working as a sous chef for the employer, North Pond. Following a hearing, an arbitrator found that claimant sustained an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of his employment and awarded him temporary total disability (TTD) benefits, permanent partial disability (PPD) benefits, and medical expenses. Additionally, the arbitrator imposed penalties under sections 19(k) and 19(l ) of the Act (id. § 19(k), (l )) and attorney fees under section 16 of the Act (id. § 16), finding the employer's prior refusal to pay TTD and medical expenses related to the August 7, 2014, work accident was dilatory, retaliatory, and objectively unreasonable.
¶ 2 The employer sought review of the arbitrator's decision before the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission (Commission). The Commission, with one commissioner dissenting, found that claimant had failed to prove that his August 7, 2014, knee injury arose out of his employment and reversed the arbitrator's decision. Claimant appealed the Commission's decision to the circuit court of Cook County, which confirmed the Commission's decision.
¶ 3 This appeal followed.
¶ 5 Claimant worked for the employer as a sous chef. His job duties included checking orders, arranging the restaurant's walk-in cooler, making sauces, "prepping," and cooking.
¶ 6 On August 7, 2014, claimant was at work getting ready for service while the other restaurant employees were beginning to set up their stations. One of the cooks was looking for a pan of carrots he had cooked earlier in the day. Claimant testified that the cook was "busy doing other things" and claimant "had some time," so claimant began looking for the carrots. Claimant began his search in the walk-in cooler because that was where the cook said he had put the carrots. He checked the top, middle, and bottom shelves in the cooler, but he was unable to locate the carrots. Claimant testified that he then knelt down on both knees to look for the carrots under the shelves because "sometimes things get knocked underneath the shelves * * * on[to] the floor." He did not find anything on the floor. As claimant stood back up, his right knee "popped" and locked up, and he was unable to straighten his leg. He "hopped" over to a table where he stood "for a second," and then hopped another 20 or 30 feet to the office where he told his boss about the injury.
¶ 7 During cross-examination, claimant testified that he was not carrying or holding anything when he stood up from a kneeling position and injured his knee. Nothing struck his knee or fell on his knee. He did not trip over anything, and he noticed no cracks or defects on the floor. Although claimant testified that it was "always wet" in the walk-in cooler, he did not notice "anything out of the ordinary" at the time of his injury. He did not claim that he slipped on a wet surface. Rather, he was simply standing up from a kneeling position when he felt his knee pop. Claimant agreed that the kneeling position he assumed while looking for the carrots was similar to the position he would be in while "looking for a shoe or something under the bed."
¶ 8 Shortly after the accident, the employer's general manager took claimant to the emergency room (ER) at St. Joseph's Hospital. Claimant reported experiencing a pop in his knee and a sudden onset of right knee pain after rising from a kneeling to standing position. After taking X-rays and evaluating claimant, the ER physicians assessed claimant as suffering from right knee pain and a possible ligamentous injury. They provided claimant with crutches and an Ace bandage and advised him to follow up with an orthopedic doctor and obtain a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan.
¶ 9 On August 11, 2014, claimant saw Dr. David Garelick, an orthopedic surgeon at the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute. Dr. Garelick noted that he had surgically repaired the medial meniscus of claimant's right knee approximately one year earlier, on August 26, 2013. The doctor noted that claimant was doing well following that surgery until August 7, 2014, when he reinjured his right knee while standing up from a squatting position. Dr. Garelick diagnosed a possible recurrent medial meniscus tear of the right knee and ordered an MRI of that knee.
¶ 10 Two days later, an MRI was performed on claimant's right knee. The MRI showed a low-grade injury of the ACL without any complete disruption. There was also a bucket-handle tear of the medial meniscus and moderate knee joint effusion. Dr. Garelick opined that the recent MRI showed a re-tear of medial meniscus consistent with a bucket-handle medial meniscus tear. He recommended surgery.
¶ 11 On August 15, 2014, Dr. Garelick performed an arthroscopy and a partial medial meniscectomy on claimant's right knee. Dr. Garelick removed approximately 80% of claimant's medial meniscus because he concluded that the meniscal tear was not repairable. The postsurgical diagnosis was a bucket-handle medial meniscal tear of the right knee.
¶ 12 After the surgery, Dr. Garelick prescribed medication and physical therapy. Claimant testified that he attended only four of eight therapy sessions because therapy was expensive and he had to pay out of pocket, and because he was already familiar with the exercises from undergoing physical therapy in the past.
¶ 13 On September 15, 2014, Dr. Garelick released claimant to work without restrictions. He discharged claimant from care one week later. Claimant did not return to Dr. Garelick or to any other doctor for further treatment to his right knee.
¶ 14 As a result of the accident and his subsequent surgery, claimant was taken off work from August 8, 2014, until September 15, 2014, and he incurred $ 10,454.25 in medical expenses. Claimant paid out of pocket for his surgery, medication, and physical therapy. The employer took the position that claimant's right knee injury did not arise out of his employment, and it refused to pay claimant TTD benefits or medical expenses.
¶ 15 Claimant returned to work on September 15, 2014, and was working at the time of the arbitration hearing. He testified that he typically worked no more than 10 hours per day but that he sometimes worked up to 16 hours. His job required him to stand for all but one hour of each workday. Claimant's right leg felt sore and achy at times, and he sometimes experienced sharp pain after working all day. His leg felt sore after work. Claimant took Ibuprofen or aspirin for his pain three or more days per week.
¶ 16 The arbitrator found claimant sustained an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of his employment on August 7, 2014. She determined claimant was injured due to an employment-related risk because he "was injured while performing his job duties, i.e. , looking for food products to prepare the food for service that evening." The arbitrator found that "[t]he act of looking for a food product was an act that the employer might reasonably have expected [claimant] to perform so that he could fulfill his assigned duties as a sous chef." She also found that claimant's current condition of ill-being was causally related to the work-related injuries he sustained on August 7, 2014, and awarded him TTD benefits, PPD benefits, and medical expenses. As stated, the arbitrator further imposed penalties under sections 19(k) and 19(l ) of the Act and awarded claimant attorney fees under section 16 of the Act.
¶ 17 The employer sought review of the arbitrator's decision before the Commission. Ultimately, the Commission reversed, finding claimant failed to prove that he sustained an accidental injury arising out of his employment. It determined claimant's injury did not result from an employment-related risk as claimant was injured after "simply standing up after having kneeled one time" and such activity "was not particular to [claimant's] employment." The Commission, instead, found that claimant had been subjected to a neutral risk, "which had no particular employment or personal characteristics." Further, it found that the evidence failed to show that claimant was exposed to that neutral risk to a greater degree than the general public. Thus, it determined claimant was not entitled to compensation under the Act. On judicial review, the circuit court of Cook County confirmed the Commission's decision.
¶ 18 This appeal followed.
¶ 20 On appeal, claimant argues that the Commission erred in finding that he failed to prove that he sustained an accidental injury arising out of his employment.
¶ 21 As an initial matter, the parties dispute the standard of review that should govern our analysis. Claimant argues that we should review the Commission's decision de novo because the relevant facts are undisputed and susceptible to only one reasonable inference. The employer contends that the undisputed facts give rise to multiple reasonable inferences. Thus, the employer argues that we should affirm the Commission's decision unless it is against the manifest weight of the evidence. We agree with the employer.
¶ 22 "Whether a claimant's injury arose out of or in the course of his employment is typically a question of fact to be resolved by the Commission, and the Commission's determination will not be reversed unless it is against the manifest weight of the evidence." Kertis v. Illinois Workers' Compensation Comm'n , ...
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McAllister v. Ill. Workers' Comp. Comm'n
...decision, and the Appellate Court, Workers' Compensation Commission Division, affirmed the judgment of the circuit court. 2019 IL App (1st) 162747WC, ¶ 76, 430 Ill.Dec. 434, 126 N.E.3d 522. We granted claimant's petition for leave to appeal. Ill. S. Ct. R. 315 (eff. July 1, 2018).¶ 2 We hol......
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