Three Years after City of Brighton: Its Effect on the Compensability of Workers’ Compensation Claims, 0517 COBJ, Vol. 46 No. 5 Pg. 47
| Author | Margaret Keck, J. |
Workers’ Compensation Law
Margaret Keck, J.
Three Years after City of Brighton: Its Effect on the Compensability of Workers’ Compensation Claims
City of Brighton v. Rodriguez introduced a new standard for judging the compensability of injuries resulting from unexplained falls in the workplace. This article analyzes Brighton and how it is shaping resolution of workers’ compensation issues.
In 2014, the Colorado Supreme Court decided City of Brighton v. Rodriguez,1 regarding the compensability of an injury that occurred when the claimant inexplicably fell at work. Contrary to workers’ compensation practitioners’ common understanding of the law, the Court held that an injury sustained in a fall on the job, the cause of which is unknown, arises out of the worker’s employment and is therefore compensable. In its analysis of the issue, the Court added unexplained falls to the “neutral risk” category, which contains a “but-for” or positional risk test not used elsewhere in workers’ compensation law This article addresses questions that remain unanswered by Brighton, including its application to claims for unknown causes of accidents or injuries other than unexplained falls, whether Brighton has substantively broadened the application of the positional risk doctrine, and burden of proof issues.
City of Brighton
For an
injury to be compensable under the Workers’
Compensation Act, it must arise out of and in the course of
employment.
When a claimant is injured in a fall at work, but it is unclear what caused the claimant to fall, it is difficult for the claimant to prove that the fall arose out of the employment. In the past, based on Finn v. Industrial Commission,8 it was generally held that a claim for injuries sustained in an unexplained fall at work must be denied because it cannot be sufficiently proven that the fall arose out of the employment. However, this burden has been substantially mitigated by Brighton. Under Brighton, if the cause of the fall at work is unknown, as a matter of law the fall arose out of the employment, thereby making any injury sustained in the fall compensable.
In Brighton, the claimant sustained head, back, and neck injuries when she fell at work. Immediately before the fall, she was conversing with two coworkers as she stood at the top of stairs and they stood at the bottom. As she began to walk down the stairs, she suddenly fell. There was no obvious obstruction or defect in the stairs, and neither the claimant nor her coworkers could say why she fell. At a hearing on compensability, her employer, the City of Brighton, argued that the fall was either caused by preexisting unruptured brain aneurysms, or the fall was unexplained—either way, the fall could not be proven to have arisen out of the employment. The administrative law judge (ALJ) specifically found that brain aneurysms did not cause the fall and concluded that the fall was unexplained. Because the claimant could not prove that her injuries arose out of her employment, her claim was denied.
This decision was affirmed by the Industrial Claim Appeals Office (ICAO or Panel),9 but it was reversed by the Court of Appeals.10 The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals’ holding that the claim was compensable, but on different grounds. The Supreme Court discussed the three “well-established” analytical categories used to evaluate the types of risks that cause injuries in the work place: (1) employment risk s, which are an inherent part of the work itself; (2) personal risk s, which are private to the employee, such as an idiopathic medical condition or an assault arising from the employee’s personal life; and (3) neutral risk s, which are neither employment-related nor personal, such as lightning, a stray bullet, or an attack by a “lunatic.”11 Neutral risks arise out of the employment because but for the employment requiring the claimant to be in a particular place at a particular time where the lightning, stray bullet, or other neutral event struck, the claimant would not have been injured. This but-for analysis, or positional risk doctrine, is specifically applied only to injuries that were sustained as a result of a neutral risk.
Injuries that result either from the first or third categories of risk, direct employment risks and neutral risks, are compensable because they arise out of the employment. Injuries that are caused by a personal risk, such as an idiopathic health condition, do not arise from the employment and therefore are not compensable (unless the personal condition combines with a hazard of employment to cause an injury,12 which was not an issue in Brighton). The Court in Brighton specifically held that an unexplained fall should be placed in the neutral risk category, thereby making an injury sustained in the fall compensable.
The Brighton decision was not unanimous—two justices dissented. In the past, the cause of neutral risks was “perfectly clear,” (i.e., car thieves, a lightning bolt, or a stray bullet), and the claimant’s job required him or her to be where the neutral force struck. But, the dissent argued, the cause of the claimant’s fall in Brighton was unknown, and therefore proof was lacking that the cause of the injury arose out of the employment.13
Expansion of But-For or Positional Risk Doctrine
Neutral risks, where the event causing an injury is neither inherent in the employment duties nor personal to the claimant, are considered compensable when, but for the employment requiring the claimant to be in a particular time at a particular place, the injury would not have occurred. This is known as the “positional risk doctrine” or “but-for” test.14
Elimination of Need to Show that the Accident Could Have Happened to Anyone
Before Brighton, key Colorado Supreme Court cases included one other element in the positional risk doctrine: that the neutral force that caused the accident would have injured any person who happened to be in the position of the claimant at the time and place in question.15 Brighton has dispensed with this element for unexplained falls.
The Court stated that when the cause of a fall is truly unknown, the but-for test of the neutral risk category is applied to determine whether the fall “arose out of” the employment. “Specifically, the resulting injury ‘arises out of’ employment if it would not have occurred but for the fact that the conditions and obligations of the employment placed the employee in the position where he or she was injured.”[16] The claimant in Brighton was not required to show that any other person who stood at the top of the stairs, as she did, would also have fallen down the stairs. Thus, a finding is no longer required that any other person who had been in the claimant’s position at the time and place of the accident would also have been injured.
The elimination of this second factor makes the distinction between the course of employment (time and place) and arising out of the employment (the origins of the injury are related to the service to the employer) ever more subtle. The Brighton analysis refers to the conditions and obligations of the employment only in terms of where they placed the claimant rather than whether the conditions themselves caused an injury, which is the more common “arising out of” analysis.
Despite the elimination of the requirement to show that the accident and injury would have happened to any person who might have been in the position of the claimant at the time and place in question, some subsequent cases have continued to apply this factor. For example, in Savage v. First Fleet, Inc.,17 the ICAO reversed a finding of compensability based on the but-for test discussed in Brighton. The claimant was a truck driver who became ill while driving. He pulled off the highway and was later found by the highway patrol. He was “largely unconscious” until he was revived at the hospital, where he was noted to have elevated levels of carbon monoxide in his system. The ALJ ultimately determined that the claimant suffered from exposure to carbon monoxide in his truck and held that the claim was compensable. However, this decision was reversed by the Panel because there was not substantial evidence that the truck actually had a carbon monoxide leak. The experts could find no defect in the truck, and no one else who drove the truck sustained carbon monoxide poisoning.
The Panel reviewed whether the injury met any of the three risk factors discussed in Brighton, stating that “[t]he confounding difficulty with the record in this claim occurs because there is significant evidence to support a finding the claimant suffered from symptoms of CO toxicity, but there is a mystery as to how that exposure came about.”18 It appears that if there was any case...
To continue reading
Request your trial