Wilson v. Conagra Foods Lamb Weston
| Decision Date | 23 March 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 43058–2015.,43058–2015. |
| Citation | 368 P.3d 1009,160 Idaho 66 |
| Court | Idaho Supreme Court |
| Parties | Amanda WILSON, Claimant–Appellant, v. CONAGRA FOODS LAMB WESTON, Employer, and Old Republic Insurance Co., Surety, Defendants–Respondents. |
Justin Aylsworth, Goicoechea Law Offices, Chtd., Boise, argued for appellant.
W. Scott Wigle, Bowen & Bailey, Boise, argued for respondents.
This is an appeal from the order of the Industrial Commission holding that Claimant failed to prove that she suffered an industrial accident that caused an injury in September/October 2010 or March/April 2011. We affirm the order of the Commission.
On May 31, 2011, Amanda Wilson ("Claimant") filed a complaint under the Worker's Compensation Act to obtain benefits for a back injury that she alleged was caused or aggravated on March 16, 2011. The matter was heard on February 22, 2013, before a referee, who submitted proposed findings of fact, conclusions of law, and recommended order. The Industrial Commission declined to adopt the referee's recommendation and issued its own findings of fact, conclusions of law, and order. It found that Claimant had failed to prove that she suffered an injury caused by an accident arising out of and in the course of her employment with Conagra Foods Lamb Weston ("Employer").
On February 15, 2008, Claimant had visited an emergency room in a hospital in Gilbert, Arizona, complaining that for one year she had back pain and right leg radiculopathy
with a recent flare-up. She rated her pain as ten out of ten and stated that she was not doing anything out of the ordinary when the pain began. An MRI two weeks later showed a herniated disc at L4–5 and some disc degeneration at L5–S1. She received pain treatments from March to May of that year.
On October 4, 2010, Claimant sought additional treatment for her low-back pain and right-leg sciatica at a health clinic in Twin Falls. She stated that she had sustained a herniated disc
in her back about three years ago and had reinjured her back nine days earlier shoveling potatoes. The physician who saw her diagnosed right lower-extremity sciatica and referred her to an orthopedic spine surgeon. She did not follow up with the surgeon until April 11, 2011.
On February 7, 2011, Claimant began working for Employer in Twin Falls. She had previously worked at Employer's premises as an employee of an agency that provided temporary employees. Her work consisted of performing general manual labor, including shoveling potatoes.
On April 5, 2011, Claimant visited a nurse practitioner because of back pain. Claimant described bilateral sciatic pain radiating to her heel that had begun six months earlier. She said it had improved after treatment until one or two days ago when she had been shoveling potatoes.
On April 6, 2011, Claimant sought medical care at a hospital emergency room in Twin Falls. She complained of increasing low-back pain over the prior three weeks, which initially started while shoveling potatoes while working for Employer. She stated that she felt a twinge at first, but the pain progressively increased. She also said that she initially felt a tingling down her left leg, and at the time of her visit her left leg was numb from her calf on down. She finished her eight-hour shift on April 5, 2011, which was the last day of shoveling potatoes. The next day, after she worked her eight-hour shift on another task, she went to the emergency room.
On April 8, 2011, Employer learned from the hospital and physician of Claimant's trip to the emergency room regarding a work injury. Employer's employee handbook included a list of safety rules, one of which was, "Immediately report each on-the-job accident or injury (regardless of how minor it may be at the time) to a supervisor or manager, and to the Plant Nurse." Employer immediately suspended Claimant pending further investigation of whether she had violated this policy Employer contacted the emergency-room physician, and he was adamant that Claimant had reported to him that she was injured at work and that his notes so reflected.
On April 13, 2011, Claimant visited another physician because of low-back pain and numbness in her legs. She reported that she has had chronic back issues for the past four years and went to the emergency room on April 6, 2011. Her fiancé told the emergency-room physician that her pain was related to shoveling at work, but the pain was not work related. She said it was something with which she had dealt for the past several years, that there was a recent flare-up, and that she had no recent injuries. She stated that she began having more pain than usual around the first of April. After examining Claimant, the physician agreed that Claimant's condition was not work related and cleared her for "normal work."
Employer terminated Claimant on April 18, 2011, for misconduct by failing to report an on-the-job injury in violation of the employee handbook. Claimant filed for unemployment compensation, but her claim was denied on the ground that her knowing violation of the policy constituted misconduct in connection with her employment.
. At the disk level she has bilateral stenosis due to broad-based disk bulge and hypertrophy [enlargement of the posterior articular processes between adjacent vertebrae] of facet capsule. At L5–S1 on the right there is some lateral recess stenosis due to a combination of a focal disk bulge and hypertrophy of the facet capsule.
This was diagnosed as "severe degenerative disk disease." Claimant's 2008 MRI had also revealed lumbar disk disease at these levels with a significant disk bulge at L4–5.
On April 26, 2011, Claimant went to the office of the surgeon who had seen her in the emergency room. She told him that she injured her back in mid-March while shoveling potatoes at work. She also stated that she had been diagnosed with a ruptured disk
in 2008, for which she had steroid injections. On May 9, 2011, the surgeon performed an L4–5 diskectomy with decompressions at both L4–5 and L5–S1. After she awakened and reported symptoms, the surgeon performed a second surgery that day. On February 21, 2012, the surgeon performed an additional right L4–5 diskectomy and decompression.
At the hearing before the referee, Claimant presented expert medical testimony that her pre-existing disk herniation at L4–5 was aggravated by a work injury. Defendants presented expert medical testimony that "claimant still has no reasonable evidence of an industrial injury or aggravation to her pre-existing back condition." Based upon the evidence, the Commission found that Claimant had failed to prove she had an accident arising out of and in the course of her employment that caused her injury.
Claimant also argued that Employer was estopped from asserting that she did not suffer a compensable injury based upon its defense of her unemployment compensation claim. She asserted that by terminating her for misconduct for failing to report an on-the-job injury in violation of the employee handbook, Employer admitted that she had suffered a work-related injury. The Commission rejected that argument because Employer's defense of the unemployment claim was not based upon the acknowledgement that the claimed accident had actually occurred. It was based upon the failure to report an injury that Claimant contended had occurred.
As a result, the Commission denied Claimant's worker's compensation claim. She then timely appealed.
Claimant contended that the doctrines of quasi-estoppel and judicial estoppel precluded Employer from contesting Claimant's assertion that she had suffered a compensable injury on or about March 16, 2011. "The doctrine of quasi-estoppel ‘prevents a party from asserting a right, to the detriment of another party, which is inconsistent with a position previously taken.’ " Vawter v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 155 Idaho 903, 910, 318 P.3d 893, 900 (2014). Claimant argued to the Commission in her post-hearing brief that quasi-estoppel applied because in the worker's compensation proceeding, "Defendants are adopting the position that Claimant did not experience work-related injuries in March of 2011," while in the earlier unemployment compensation proceedings Defendants took the opposite position and asserted "that Claimant suffered a work-related injuries [sic] in March of 2011." The Commission found that the doctrine of quasi-estoppel did not apply because Employer did not take inconsistent positions in the two proceedings.
Claimant was terminated for violating the written company policy requiring her to "[i]mmediately report each on-the-job accident or injury (regardless of how minor it may be at the time) to a supervisor or manager, and to the Plant Nurse." The termination letter she received stated that she violated that policy as follows:
On April 6, 2011, you reported to the emergency room of St. Luke's hospital. According to the doctor's report, you indicated that you suffered back pain that began 3 weeks prior while working in sanitation. Upon checking our records, you did not report this incident to a supervisor. We also found that you did not notify the Plant Nurse of this incident or that you were seeking medical treatment.
Claimant's claim for unemployment compensation was investigated by a claims examiner for the Department of Labor. The notes and determination made by the claims examiner were offered into evidence during the worker's compensation proceedings. The claims examiner's notes stated that the claims examiner had telephoned Claimant regarding her claim and during that conversation Claimant said that she never told the doctor that she "had...
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