Utah Worker Established Causation in Spite of Preexisting Knee Condition
Applying Utah’s so-called “Allen standard,” under which an employee with a preexisting condition must show that her employment contributed “something substantial” to increase the risk already faced in everyday life, a state appellate court reversed a decision by the Appeals Board of the Utah Labor Commission that had denied the injury claim of an employee who had preexisting osteoarthritis and who suffered a torn meniscus in her right knee when her foot slipped off a sewing machine pedal as she hurried to make her production target [Oceguera v. Labor Comm’n, 2020 UT App 83, 2020 Utah App. LEXIS 82 (May 29, 2020)]. In a statement that might puzzle practitioners in other jurisdictions, the court indicated that the inquiry into the “unusualness” of the workplace activity was an objective assessment that the appellate court was in a better position to analyze than the Labor Commission.
Background
The employee worked as a seamstress for the employer. She generally worked in a hurry to maximize her production pay rate. The nature of her work required that she move from one machine to another at various times in her workday. She sustained a torn meniscus, which eventually required surgery, when she depressed a foot pedal to activate a sewing machine and her foot slipped and twisted inward, causing a “crack” in her right knee. During the treatment process, doctors discovered that the employee had preexisting osteoarthritis in her injured knee.
When the employee’s doctors and the employer’s doctors failed to agree on whether the employee’s torn meniscus was attributable to her preexisting condition or to the employment, the ALJ referred the matter to an impartial medical panel. The panel observed that the employee’s osteoarthritis pre-dated the workplace accident, and concluded that the preexisting condition contributed, in part, to the severity of her meniscal tear.
The Allen Standard
The ALJ determined that, under Utah’s “Allen standard [Allen v. Industrial Comm’n, 729 P.2d 15, 25 (Utah 1986), in order to prove that her injury was legally caused by the workplace accident, the employee had to “show that the employment contributed something substantial to increase the risk [she] already faced in everyday life because of [her preexisting] condition.”
Applying the Allen standard to the case, the ALJ concluded that the act of one’s foot slipping in a limited manner on a slippery surface was a common occurrence in modern, non-employment life, and that the “physical exertion” the employee faced did “not exceed” the usual and customary activities of daily life in the modern world. The ALJ also determined that the force with which the employee slipped and twisted her knee would not have been sufficient to cause a meniscal tear in a healthy knee, but her pre-existing condition allowed the injury to occur with reduced force. The ALJ, therefore, dismissed the employee’s request for benefits.
A majority of the Board adopted the ALJ’s findings and upheld the ALJ’s decision, observing that it was not unusual for a person to hurry and then step on a surface and have one’s foot slip off and twist to the side, such as when a person hurried to cross a street and his or her foot slipped off a street curb or hurried to catch a bus or train and then slipped while boarding.
Appellate Court Opinion
Initially, the appellate court noted that the employer had not contested the fact that the employee’s injury happened “by accident,” nor had it contested that the employee’s injury was medically caused by the workplace accident. The only issue contested was whether the employee had satisfied her burden of proving that her injuries were legally caused by her workplace accident.
The court stressed that under the Allen test, the employee must compare the circumstances of the workplace injury to the exertions of a typical person’s non-employment life, and persuade a court that her injury was caused by an exertion greater than that undertaken in normal, everyday life. According to the court, this endeavor involves two steps:
- The court must characterize the employment-related activity that precipitated the employee’s injury, taking into account the totality of the circumstances; and
- The court must determine whether this activity is objectively unusual or extraordinary.
Unusualness Was Objective Assessment
The court noted that the second part of the legal causation test — the inquiry into the “unusualness” of the workplace activity — was an objective assessment. In the appellate court’s view, the exertion expended by the employee in the course of her accident was greater than that usually undertaken by an average person in non-employment life. In an effort to maximize her production rate, the employee was hurrying to the next station. She applied “significant pressure” to the foot pedal. And that foot pedal, unbeknownst to her, was more slippery than she was anticipating, since it had no grip tape and was covered by a stray piece of cloth. In the course of daily non-employment life, the court stressed, people did not typically encounter those sorts of situations.
The court zeroed in on the unanticipated manner in which the employee’s foot slipped off of the pedal, indicating that was perhaps most significant. Her exertion was at least as awkward and unusual as in two cases the court cited as instructive. According to the court, the ultimate question Allen asked the court to answer was whether the demands of the employment contributed something substantial to increase the risk the employee already faced in everyday life because of her osteoarthritis. On the facts of this case, taking into account the totality of the circumstances, the court said it did.