Muhammad v. Laidlaw Transit, Inc.

Citation917 So.2d 842
Decision Date24 June 2005
Docket NumberNo. 2030386.,2030386.
PartiesAlejandro MUHAMMAD, individually, and on behalf of Ashley Kyles, a dependent minor v. LAIDLAW TRANSIT, INC.
CourtSupreme Court of Alabama

Joe A. King, Jr., of Morris, Conchin, Cooper & King, Huntsville, for appellant.

Charles H. Clark, Jr., and David M. Fleming of Huie, Fernambucq & Stewart, LLP, Birmingham, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

On June 25, 2003, Alejandro Muhammad filed an action as the surviving spouse of, and on behalf of the minor child of, Dylana Muhammad ("the employee"), seeking benefits under the Alabama Workers' Compensation Act ("the Act"), § 25-5-1 et seq., Ala.Code 1975. Laidlaw Transit, Inc. ("the employer"), timely filed its answer on August 1, 2003. The case was tried on December 15, 2003. On December 29, 2003, the trial court entered a judgment in favor of the employer. Thereafter, the employee's surviving spouse, on behalf of himself and the employee's child, filed a notice of appeal on January 16, 2004. We affirm.

The record reveals that the employee drove a bus for the employer. As part of her normal daily route, the employee transported severely handicapped children to and from school.1 A Huntsville municipal aide, Priscilla Hamel, rode along with the employee in the bus to assist her with and to take care of the handicapped children. In addition to her normal route, the employee sometimes drove students to school competitions and other events. The employee drove several students to an out-of-town band competition on September 27, 2001. The employee did not return home until after midnight. After approximately four or five hours of sleep, the employee returned to duty at approximately 6:00 a.m. On the afternoon of September 28, 2001, while driving a bus for the employer (but after having completed her drop-offs of students), the employee had a seizure that resulted in the employee's death.

The employee had a prior history of epilepsy, including no fewer than three seizures. At the time of her death, she was being treated with medication prescribed by Dr. Tejanand Mulpur, a licensed neurologist. In his deposition, the transcript of which was admitted into evidence at trial, Dr. Mulpur indicated that the employee had not had a seizure for "quite some time" before the seizure she suffered at work on September 28, 2001. He testified that the employee's last seizure had been "a few months ago." Mulpur testified that the September 28, 2001, seizure led to "cardiopulmonary arrest and then that led to brain damage, from which [the employee] never recovered, and that's how she died."

Dr. Mulpur characterized the seizure that led to the employee's death as a "break-through seizure." He testified that whenever a patient has a break-through seizure, the medical community tries to look for the cause of that seizure; he added that there were a number of potential causes for the September 28, 2001, seizure. Among the possible causes identified by Dr. Mulpur were lack of sleep, fatigue, and stress. Dr. Mulpur also testified that seizures can result from a patient's failure to take his or her medication or from not eating. Additionally, Dr. Mulpur testified that break-through seizures, like the one experienced by the employee, can simply occur for no reason.

Dr. Mulpur testified that he had no personal knowledge of whether or not the employee had taken her medication on September 28, 2001. However, he did testify that the employee's lack of break-through seizures over several months warranted an inference that she had been taking her medication and that it was working.

Dr. Mulpur opined, based upon "assumed facts," that "added stress and sleep deprivation" caused the employee's seizure on September 28, 2001, and that the employee died on October 7, 2001, as a result of that seizure. The "facts" that Dr. Mulpur was asked to assume in his testimony were that "prior to the seizure that led to [the employee's] death, [her] employment exposed her to a stressful condition, more so than her average work day" (emphasis added). However, Dr. Mulpur indicated that the employee's having driven the bus on the day of her seizure would amount to nothing more than "routine activity" that the employee would have been "used to," and on cross-examination by counsel for the employer Dr. Mulpur admitted that he had "no idea" what, in the medical sense, had brought on the employee's seizure on September 28, 2001.

At the trial, the employee's coworker (Hamel) and the employee's surviving spouse and child testified. The coworker testified that she had observed the employee on a daily basis for four months preceding the day of the seizure and had noticed that the employee had looked tired on September 28, 2001, and that she "seemed to be stressed that day" because, among other things, she was not making conversation and was "spaced out." The coworker had previously executed an affidavit in which she had asserted that the employee had been awake much of the preceding night driving a high-school band out of town and that on September 28, 2001, the employee had "indicated several times that she did not get any sleep while on her business trip and was very tired." However, when the coworker was asked at trial whether the employee had been exposed on the day of her seizure to "a more stressful situation than everyday normal life," the coworker responded in the negative, adding that the employee had been "used to her route because she did it every day." Further, although the coworker alluded on direct examination to the occurrence of "fussing" between the employee and one of the handicapped children's parents on the morning of the seizure, the coworker testified on cross-examination that the employee actually had not experienced "confrontations" with children or parents on the day of the seizure (unlike other days during the four months preceding the day of the seizure during which the coworker had observed the employee).

The employee's daughter testified that on September 27, 2001, the employee had been at work from 6:00 a.m. until midnight, and that the employee had gone to bed around 1:00 a.m. on the morning of September 28, 2001, upon returning from work that day. She testified that the employee had usually gone to bed around 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. The employee's daughter testified that the employee had slept only four or five hours before awakening on the morning of September 28, 2001. The employee's daughter did not know if the employee had taken her seizure medication before the seizure.

The employee's surviving spouse testified that the employee had been prescribed seizure medication that she had taken regularly. He testified that at lunchtime on September 28, 2001, the day of the fatal seizure, he had talked to the employee on her cellular telephone, and he recounted that she had sounded tired and stressed. He also testified that the last seizure the employee had suffered before the fatal seizure had occurred on August 8, 2001.

In ruling for the employer, the trial court analyzed the employee's injury as a nonaccidental injury. The trial court concluded, in pertinent part:

"The Court finds that the plaintiff has failed to satisfy medical causation and legal causation as required in the instant workers' compensation action. The Court notes that although the [employee] may have suffered from some `work related fatigue and/or stress,' the plaintiff has failed to establish that any such work related fatigue or stress was the proximate cause of the seizure that led to the [employee]'s death as opposed to other causes. ... The Court specifically finds that the plaintiff has failed to establish that the [employee's] death was brought by a non-accidental injury. The Court finds that the death of the plaintiff's decedent is not compensable under the Alabama Workers' Compensation Act."

(Emphasis added.)

Ala.Code 1975, § 25-5-31, provides that benefits under the Act are awardable when it is shown that the employer's actual or lawfully imputed negligence is "the natural and proximate cause" of an employee's injury or death (emphasis added).2 In order for the employee's surviving spouse to recover compensation under the Act, on his behalf and on behalf of the employee's child, for the death of the employee, he "`must establish both legal and medical causation.'" Ex parte Southern Energy Homes, Inc., 873 So.2d 1116, 1121 (Ala.2003) (emphasis added; quoting Ex parte Moncrief, 627 So.2d 385, 388 (Ala.1993)); see also Slimfold Mfg. Co. v. Martin, 417 So.2d 199, 202 (Ala.Civ.App.1981) ("the burden is on the claimant to establish a definite causal connection between the work and the injury"), cert. quashed, 417 So.2d 203 (Ala.1982). Legal causation, in the context of a nonaccidental injury, requires a showing that in the employee's performance of work duties, the employee "was exposed to `danger or risk materially in excess' of that danger to which all persons are ordinarily exposed in their everyday lives." Ex parte Trinity Indus., Inc., 680 So.2d 262, 269 (Ala.1996). In contrast, medical causation is established by adducing evidence "tending to show that the exposure to [that] risk or danger ... `was in fact [a] contributing cause of the injury' for which benefits are sought." Id.

The trial court did not specifically recite the foregoing standards; however, in concluding that the employee's surviving spouse had not shown that the employee's fatigue or stress (as opposed to other possible causes) was the proximate cause of her fatal seizure, that court expressly determined that the employee's surviving spouse had failed to prove legal and medical causation, both of which were required in order for benefits to be awarded under the Act. Therefore, by necessary implication, the trial court determined (1) that the employee was not exposed to a danger or risk materially in excess of that to which people are normally exposed in their everyday lives and (2) that even if...

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    • United States
    • Alabama Court of Civil Appeals
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    ...them to be.” ' ” Francis Powell Enters., Inc. v. Andrews, 21 So.3d 726, 736 (Ala.Civ.App.2009) (quoting Muhammad v. Laidlaw Transit, Inc., 917 So.2d 842, 846 (Ala.Civ.App.2005) (quoting in turn Ex parte Staggs, 825 So.2d 820 822 (Ala.2001))). “For an injury to be compensable, it must be ‘ca......
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    ...the facts to be different from what the trial court found them to be.' Ex parte Staggs, 825 So.2d at 822." Muhammad v. Laidlaw Transit, Inc., 917 So.2d 842, 846 (Ala.Civ.App.2005). Apportionment of Benefits/Judicial Powell argues that because Andrews had a preexisting back injury with spond......

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