Florida Court Re-examines Valcourt-Williams “Increased Risk” Analysis
A Florida appellate court held that a state JCC had erred when the JCC denied compensability of a claim in which an employee suffered an unexplained fall as she walked across a carpeted floor and fell into a door as she was leaving the employer’s facility at the end of her workday [Soya v. Health First, Inc., 2022 Fla. App. LEXIS 1209 (1st DCA, Feb. 21, 2022)]. The court held that the JCC’s use of “increased hazard” analysis found in Sedgwick CMS v. Valcourt-Williams, 271 So. 3d 1133 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) (en banc), was overbroad. Noting that the JCC had indicated the claimant’s fall could have occurred anywhere, the court said the increased hazard analysis under Valcourt-Williams applied only where there was a contributing cause outside of the employment. Here, there had been no such outside cause.
Background
Claimant, a massage therapist, was leaving work for the day. As she exited the massage room, she 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.
JCC’s Denies Compensability
Applying the ruling in Valcourt-Williams, (en banc), the JCC denied compensability. The JCC reasoned that under Valcourt-Williams, an injury is compensable “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.”
Readers will recall that 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. The First DCA held that the injury did not arise out of work because the risk existed in her non-employment life: it was undisputed that features of Valcourt-Williams’s “non-employment life”—her dog, her kitchen, her reaching for a coffee cup—caused the accident [to read my earlier discussion of the deeply-divided Valcourt-Williams decision, click here].
1st DCA Reverses
The appellate court disagreed with the JCC’s analysis and reversed. It said the JCC’s “increased hazard” analysis was overbroad. The increased hazard analysis under Valcourt-Williams applied only where there was a contributing cause outside of the employment (e.g., the dog). Writing for the court, Judge Roberts stressed that application of the analysis where—as here—the cause was unknown, was too broad. Citing a line of cases that includes Ross v. Charlotte Cnty. Pub. Sch., 100 So. 3d 781, 782 (Fla. 1st DCA 2012), Judge Roberts also stressed that where an accident’s cause is unknown, it is error to deny compensability on grounds that the accident “could have happened elsewhere.”
According to the court, Ross, et. al, were not abrogated by Valcourt-Williams. Rather, Valcourt-Williams abrogated personal comfort, pre-1994-law cases (1994 was the year that the Florida Legislature first defined “arising out of” [see § 440.02(32), Fla. Stat.]. The court also rejected the JCC’s attempt to argue that the claimant had not been “actively engaged” in work at the time of the accident. Walking through the employer’s premises on her way out was an unavoidable part of her job, stressed the court.
Based on all the foregoing, the court reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings in accordance with the opinion. Judge Bilbrey concurred specially in the opinion.