Soya v. Health First, Inc.
Decision Date | 21 February 2022 |
Docket Number | 1D21-59 |
Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Parties | Zahava Soya, Appellant, v. Health First, Inc. and CCMSI, Appellees. |
Not final until disposition of any timely and authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or 9.331.
Date of Accident: December 13, 2019.
On appeal from an order of the Office of the Judges of Compensation Claims. Robert L. Dietz, Judge.
Michael J. Winer of Winer Law Group, Tampa, for Appellant.
Jamey S. Rodgers and William H. Rogner, Winter Park, for Appellees.
Mark Touby of Touby, Chait & Sicking, P.L., Coral Gables, for Amicus.
In this workers' compensation case, Claimant appeals the Judge of Compensation Claims' (JCC's) order denying compensability of her injuries from an unexplained fall at work. We reverse, as follows.
Claimant a massage therapist, was leaving work for the day; she exited the massage room, walked across a carpeted floor in the massage waiting room toward the women's locker room entrance, and fell into the door separating the waiting room and the locker room. She was wearing rubber-soled shoes carrying non-work items (her purse, a teacup, a small bag of homemade chocolates), and walking at a normal pace. She does not know exactly how the fall happened. The Employer/Carrier (E/C) retained an engineer to inspect the flooring area; he found no anomalies with its surface or configuration and noted that it was slip-resistant.
The JCC denied compensability under Sedgwick CMS v. Valcourt-Williams, 271 So.3d 1133 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) (en banc), tracking its language almost exactly in reasoning that the injury did not arise out of employment because "an accident is compensable under Valcourt only if the employment necessarily exposed the claimant to conditions that would substantially contribute to the risk of injury to which the Claimant would not normally be exposed during her non-employment life." Review of this ruling is de novo. Id. at 1135. In Valcourt-Williams, a "remote" employee was hurt falling over her pet dog as she reached for a coffee cup in her kitchen during a workday break; this court held that the injury did not arise out of work because the risk existed in her non-employment life: "it is undisputed that features of Valcourt-Williams's 'non-employment life'-her dog, her kitchen, her reaching for a coffee cup-caused the accident." 271 So.3d at 1136.
Id. Clumsiness is covered. Taylor v. Sch. Bd. of Brevard Cnty., 888 So.2d 1, 5 (Fla. 2004) ().
Ross et al. were not abrogated by Valcourt-Williams; Valcourt-Williams abrogated personal comfort, pre-1994-law cases, 1994 being the year that the Legislature first defined "arising out of." See § 440.02(32), Fla. Stat. (Supp. 1994); Ch. 93-415, § 2, at 69, Laws of Fla.; Vigliotti v. K-mart Corp., 680 So.2d 466, 468 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996) (). We reject the E/C's argument that these "unexplained fall" cases were not truly unexplained but identified a cause in that Ms. Ross either "tripped" or "lost her balance," Ms. Walker "slipped," Mr. Caputo's fall was from a ladder, and Ms. Lanham "tripped"; despite the opinions' use of these words, none of these opinions identifies an incipient cause of the accident (nothing they tripped over or slipped on), other than being obligated to be present on the worksite at the time of the accident. See Lanham v. Dep't of Env't Prot., 868 So.2d 561, 563 (Fla. 1st DCA 2004) ().
Consequently, the order on appeal is Reversed, and the case Remanded for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.
The majority opinion and my dissent in Sedgwick CMS v. Valcourt-Williams, 271 So.3d 1133 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) (en banc), unfortunately created confusion about what is a compensable workplace accident. The majority opinion here helps resolve that confusion, and I join it in full.
In Valcourt-Williams, the majority overruled only four cases.[1]Those four cases all involved injuries that occurred before "arising out of" was defined by the Legislature. See Ch. 93-415, § 2, Laws of Florida. The definition is now codified in section 440.02(36), Florida Statutes, which states,
In my Valcourt-Williams dissent I discussed various other cases, asking how they could be squared with the majority's holding that the workplace trip and fall there was not compensable. I was concerned that the majority had overruled or cast doubt on important precedent on workplace falls and other injuries. In dissenting, I believed that I had received no answer.[2]
The majority opinion today, as well as our recent decision in Silberberg v. Palm Beach County School Board, 1D20-75 (Fla. 1st DCA Feb. 16, 2022), answers many of my concerns. Workplace slip and falls, as well as other common workplace injuries, remain compensable under our caselaw predating Valcourt-Williams so long as the injury "arises out of employment" no matter if the claimant was "literally performing work at the time" of the injury. See Vigliotti v. K-mart Corp., 680 So.2d 466, 467 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996); see also Silberberg, slip op. at 13 () .
It should also be recognized that Valcourt-Williams cited with approval Sentry Insurance Company v Hamlin, 69 So.3d 1065 (Fla. 1st DCA 2011). Valcourt-Williams, 271 So.3d at 1134. In Hamlin we stated, "Work connection determines coverage under chapter 440, not fault." Id. at 1069; see also Taylor v. Sch. Bd. of Brevard Cnty., 888 So.2d 1 (Fla. 2004). So the...
To continue reading
Request your trial