State v. Adams

• Docket Number: Supreme Court No. S-17918
• Decision Date: 07 October 2022
• Citation: 518 P.3d 280
• Parties: State of Alaska, WORKERS’ COMPENSATION BENEFITS GUARANTY FUND, Appellant, v. Virgil A. ADAMS, Michael A. Heath d/b/a O&M Enterprises, and Michael A. Heath Trust, Appellees.
• Court: Alaska Supreme Court

518 P.3d 280

State of Alaska, WORKERS’ COMPENSATION BENEFITS GUARANTY FUND, Appellant,

v.Virgil A. ADAMS, Michael A. Heath d/b/a O&M Enterprises, and Michael A. Heath Trust, Appellees.

Supreme Court No. S-17918

Supreme Court of Alaska.

October 7, 2022

Siobhan McIntyre and Kimberly D. Rodgers, Assistant Attorneys General, Anchorage, and Treg R. Taylor, Attorney General, Juneau, for Appellant.

Charles W. Coe, Law Office of Charles W. Coe, Anchorage, for Appellee Virgil A. Adams.

No appearance by Appellees Michael A. Heath Trust and Michael A. Heath d/b/a O&M Enterprises.

Before: Winfree, Chief Justice, Maassen, Carney, and Henderson, Justices. [Borghesan, Justice, not participating.]

OPINION

CARNEY, Justice.

I. INTRODUCTION

The Alaska Workers’ Compensation Act does not allow compensation for an injury proximately caused by the injured employee's intoxication. The Alaska Workers’ Compensation Board decided that a carpenter who admitted using alcohol and cocaine before his injury had a compensable disability because it determined the accident would have happened regardless of his drug and alcohol use. The Workers’ Compensation Benefits Guaranty Fund, which is responsible for payment if an employer defaults, appealed, arguing that the employee's intoxication barred compensation. The Workers’ Compensation Appeals Commission affirmed the Board's decision because substantial evidence supported it. We affirm the Commission's decision.

II. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

This is the second appeal stemming from Virgil Adams's 2011 work-related accident; we remanded the case to the Commission to consider the Fund's intoxication-defense appeal, which the Commission had not considered.¹ Facts are taken from our earlier decision, with additional details relevant to the intoxication issue drawn from the record.

Adams fell about 30 feet while attempting a roof repair on Michael Heath's rental property after cribbing underneath a ladder he was using gave way.² Adams is now permanently and totally disabled.³ Adams admitted drinking beer and using cocaine before the accident.⁴ He testified that Heath supplied the cocaine, and Adams described the job site as "a revolving frat house," with beer readily available on site.⁵ He acknowledged that he had not inspected the cribbing before climbing the ladder.⁶

Neither Heath nor the trust that owned the property had workers’ compensation coverage.⁷ Adams filed a workers’ compensation claim and later joined the Fund as a party to the claim; the Fund controverted benefits based on Adams's intoxication.⁸ During litigation the Fund raised additional defenses, and the Board held one hearing on all of them.⁹ The Fund presented testimony from "a doctor certified to review drug and alcohol tests,"¹⁰ Dr. Andris Antoniskis. Adams called as a witness the paramedic who treated him at the job site.

The paramedic testified that Adams admitted having three beers, but that he did not think Adams looked intoxicated. The paramedic did not observe bloodshot eyes and said Adams was not slurring his speech. The paramedic was concerned about Adams's alcohol consumption because of alcohol's interaction with pain medication the paramedic planned to administer. He gave Adams a small amount of medication. After seeing no adverse interaction, he administered more of the medication shortly afterward. Emergency room records showed that Adams had alcohol on his breath when he arrived; a blood test taken at 6:01 p.m. showed an alcohol level of 49 milligrams per deciliter.¹¹ A urine drug screen was positive for cocaine but no other drug.

Dr. Antoniskis wrote two reports based on records made available to him. His March 2013 report did not reach useful conclusions because he had little information. With respect to the positive test for cocaine, Dr. Antoniskis said there was "no way to determine impairment based on a urine drug test alone." He indicated the only inference he could make from the information he had was "that the cocaine was used somewhere within 48 to 72 hours" of urine sample collection. The information provided about the alcohol screening was equally scant: "no units of measure[,] ... time of collection, ... [ ]or manner of collection" accompanied the report. Dr. Antoniskis's first report nonetheless concluded Adams would have had "some degree of impairment" from alcohol.

Dr. Antoniskis's July 2015 addendum had more specific conclusions about alcohol use because he had more records available. He estimated that Adams would have had a blood alcohol level of 71.5 milligrams per deciliter at the time of the accident and that with this level of blood alcohol Adams "would have had impairment of balance and speech, reaction time, and judgment." The addendum did not address cocaine use. Dr. Antoniskis "fe[lt] that Mr. Adams’[s] injuries [were] in large part due to his impairment," but aside from general statements about increased risk, he did not explain this conclusion.

Dr. Antoniskis testified at the hearing, giving more detail about both cocaine use and calculations of blood alcohol level. He indicated that "the effects of cocaine typically last about 20 or 30 minutes from the standpoint of causing stimulation and agitation" and that mixing alcohol and cocaine "would certainly impair somebody's judgment more." He said that a person's "judgments and alertness could be impacted mixing the two together" and — specifically about Adams — that using cocaine "certainly could have had an impact also on his level of impairment and judgment." When asked whether Adams's intoxication could "have impaired his judgment regarding safety precautions like checking the ladder," Dr. Antoniskis agreed that "[t]here's a very good probability that the alcohol and the cocaine use would have had a negative effect on the judgment of not checking that."

On cross-examination Adams made the point that Dr. Antoniskis did not know when Adams actually consumed the alcohol, which could affect blood alcohol calculations. Dr. Antoniskis said alcohol will not show up in a blood test until it has been absorbed through the digestive system, which happens within 60 minutes of ingestion. Dr. Antoniskis's calculation assumed Adams's blood alcohol level had been falling the entire time period from the accident to the blood draw in the hospital, but he acknowledged that he did not know when Adams had his last drink. This raised the question whether Adams's blood alcohol level might have peaked later than Dr. Antoniskis assumed. Dr. Antoniskis said that he had nothing to show whether Adams had developed a tolerance for alcohol and testified that nothing in the EMT records showed that Adams was intoxicated when first responders attended to him.

In its closing argument the Fund emphasized testimony about intoxication, but it did not discuss how intoxication proximately caused the injuries. Its prehearing memorandum had one paragraph about proximate cause and Adams's intoxication, which offered several short arguments about causation without focusing on one.

The Board rejected all of the Fund's defenses, including the intoxication defense, in an interlocutory decision. The Board found Adams credible. The Board summarized Dr. Antoniskis's testimony as extrapolating that Adams's "blood alcohol level was .071 at the time of the injury" even though Dr. Antoniskis conceded that "he had no way of knowing when [Adams] drank his last beer, or the strength of the beers." The Board characterized Dr. Antoniskis's testimony about "the level of impairment caused by" Adams's cocaine use as "less certain," saying that Dr. Antoniskis "was unable to give a concise opinion on that point."

The Board listed factors that Dr. Antoniskis agreed might have affected Adams's intoxication level; noted that "Dr. Antoniskis could not say with certainty whether [Adams's] blood alcohol level was still rising at the time his blood was drawn, or had begun to decline"; and called Dr. Antoniskis's "opinion on ... [Adams's] level of impairment ..., at best, an educated guess." Based on its own experience, judgment, and observations, the Board found that different people "experience different levels of impairment from consuming the same number of alcoholic drinks, depending on tolerance," with some "unable to ... complete tasks requiring motor skills, while others might perform with little or no visible impairment." The Board found that "intoxication was not the reason for the fall" because the fall resulted from the cribbing giving way.

In its analysis, the Board said there was "no evidence alcohol or drug impairment played any role in the failed cribbing" that caused the fall and that there was "no logical connection." As a result, the Board thought Dr. Antoniskis's opinions were not dispositive, and it gave those opinions less weight. The Board decided "[t]he weight of the evidence supports a conclusion that loose cribbing supporting the ladder gave way, which would have caused anyone to fall" and concluded that intoxication was not a proximate cause of Adams's accident.

In June 2017 the Board issued its final decision, concluding that Adams was entitled to most of the compensation benefits he sought and that Heath, or the Fund if Heath defaulted, was entitled to an offset for Social Security disability benefits.

The Fund revived an appeal it had filed after the interlocutory decision about the affirmative defenses, setting out two grounds for appeal: (1) whether Heath and his company were engaged in a business or industry and thus were employers; and (2) whether Adams's intoxication proximately caused his injuries.¹²

The Commission reversed the Board's decision about Heath's status as an employer but declined to address the intoxication issue because that reversal made the issue moot.¹³ Adams appealed to us; we reversed the Commission's decision and remanded the case to the Commission so it could consider the intoxication issue.¹⁴

On remand the Commission, in a divided decision, affirmed the Board's decision...