Redressing Post Valcourt-Williams Confusion

April 4, 2022 by on News

In a pair of recent decisions, the First DCA clarified, once and for all, any questions regarding compensability of accidents involving idiopathic conditions, or pre-existing conditions (or neither), and unexplained falls, or explained falls (or neither) following its 2019 opinion, Sedgwick CMS v. Valcourt-Williams, 271 So. 3d 1133 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) (en banc).

The very simple rule in this: if accidents and injuries are work-related, then they are covered by the Workers’ Compensation Act; if they are not work-related, then they are not covered. Done and done!  If only it were so simple….

The cases are Silberberg v. Palm Beach Cty. Sch. Bd., 47 Fla. L. Weekly D461 (Fla. 1st DCA February 16, 2022) and Soya v. Health First, Inc., 47 Fla. L. Weekly D 489 (Fla. 1st DCA February 21, 2022). The majority in Silberberg and the special concurrence by Judge Bilbrey in Soya directly address and seek to ameliorate some uncertainty in the legal community as to the state of the law following the Valcourt-Williams opinion.  Judge Bilbrey writes: “[t]he majority opinion and my dissent in Sedgwick CMS v. Valcourt-Williams, 271 So. 3d 1133 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) (en banc), unfortunately created confusion about what is a compensable workplace accident. The majority opinion here helps resolve that confusion, and I join it in full.”  Writing for the majority in Silberberg, Judge Tannenbaum states: “Then there is Valcourt-Williams, about which there has been some misunderstanding with regard to its scope and significance. As we see it, Valcourt-Williams involved an otherwise unremarkable trip-and-fall-at-work accident that happened to occur during a comfort break and involve the employee's own dog as a tripping hazard.” The Court characterized Valcourt-Williams as “a narrow, trip-and-fall/comfort-break-accident case.” Thus, the Court contends that Valcourt-Williams did not signal a philosophical shift in cases concerning compensability.

The Silberberg Case

Silberberg was injured while working as a teacher.  Before dismissing his class for lunch, Silberberg sat in his chair for approximately five minutes.  He then stood up from his chair and tried to take a step but had no feeling in his left leg, which gave way, causing him to fall on the linoleum floor and break his left femur.

He reported to the E/C’s IME that he experienced occasional numbness in his left foot prior to the accident.  However, the IME opined that Silberberg’s numbness "did not seem related to any major medical illness,” as there was no evidence of a vascular disease, diabetes, sciatic nerve injury, or severe lower lumbar disc disease. The doctor concluded that the leg numbness "most likely due to brief compression of the nerves for the left leg due to the sitting in one position,” and that he “may have had some venous insufficiency that could give rise to an occasional tendency to experience a compressed nerve when sitting.” The IME opined that Silberberg probably had "a benign condition." Silberberg’s own IME also opined that his leg fell asleep because of a very common phenomenon involving compression of the nerve and most likely the vasculature.

Relying on the case of Caputo v. ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, 93 So. 3d 1097 (Fla. 1st DCA 2012), Silberberg argued that there was no evidence that he had a "pre-existing condition" and therefore “any exertion” connected with his employment satisfied the legal test of causation.  The Court, however, held that Silberberg took “too narrow a view of what counts as a personal risk that will trigger the ‘increased hazard’ test, rather than the more permissive ‘any exertion’ test for compensability.”

The Court explained that the “any exertion” test applies when there is no previously diagnosed or symptomatic condition, or even a previously undiagnosed and asymptomatic idiopathic condition, that contributed to an accident.  In such cases, "any exertion,” meaning any effort in

furtherance of work, will satisfy the statutory MCC requirement.  In other words, the employee’s work is necessarily the preponderant cause because it is the only cause. There is no work versus non-work risks to be compared.

By contrast, when a pre-existing condition or idiopathic condition is present as a potential cause of an accident, the “any exertion” test does not apply.  Rather, “the ‘increased hazard’ test is necessary to determine, from among the contributing causes of the fall, whether the preponderant cause—the one triggering the subsequent links in the chain, including the onset of the idiopathy that led to the fall—was just walking that incidentally was work; or was truly movement that stands apart from daily life as work qua work in furtherance of the employee's duties.”

In Mr. Silberberg’s case, the majority found that a personal, non-work-related condition did in fact contribute to Silberberg’s accident: “He brought to work his inherently personal physiological tendency that his leg would go numb—that his vasculature and nervous system would respond in a certain way—while he sat or stood.” This idiopathy therefore required application of the "increased hazard" test.

The Court upheld the JCC’s finding that Silberberg’s work was not the MCC of his fall.  In doing so, it pointed to the fact that Silberberg failed to present evidence that his sitting at the

time of the accident was an exertion or strain more or different than what he ordinarily would encounter in his non-work life.  His sitting at work was merely “an incidental trigger of Silberberg's idiopathic response.”  Therefore, the JCC was correct in denying compensability of his accident.

The Soya Case

A few days after the Silberberg case was issued, the First DCA handed down the Soya opinion.  While Silberberg’s accident was not compensable, the First DCA held that Soya’s potentially was and remanded it for additional proceedings.

The claimant in this case was a massage therapist, who was injured while leaving work for the da.  As she exited the massage room and walked across a carpeted floor in the massage waiting room toward the women's locker room entrance, she fell into the door.  She did not know exactly how the fall happened. The E/C actually retained an engineer to inspect the flooring area and found no anomalies with its surface or configuration and noted that it was slip-resistant.

Relying upon Valcourt-Williams, the JCC denied compensability.  The JCC reasoned that the injury did not arise out of employment because "an accident is compensable under Valcourt 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.”  The First DCA held that it was error for the JCC to apply the increased hazard test in Soya’s situation because that test applies only where there is a contributing cause outside of employment (e.g., the dog in Valcourt’s case). Its application here, where the cause was unknown, was overbroad. Consequently, the Court remanded the case back to the JCC.

Though the Court did not explicitly say so, in the absence of any evidence of a pre-existing or idiopathic condition in the record, the JCC must presumably apply the “any exertion” test if the case proceeds.

In his special concurrence, Judge Bilbrey expresses his reassurance that, in light of the Silberberg and Soya cases, the Court was not fundamentally changing compensability analysis with the Valcourt-Williams opinion.  He writes, “[t]he majority's holding in Valcourt-Williams can be limited to what it explicitly did — restating the need for an injury to arise out of employment for the injury to be compensable…”  Rather than signaling a sea-change in jurisprudence, the Valcourt-Williams overruled “only four….outlier cases with injuries too attenuated from employment for employment to be the major contributing cause of the injury.”

Conclusion

Taken together, these two recent cases purport to clarify, but not alter, compensability jurisprudence.  The Court highlights as crucial to the “arising out of” analysis whether a personal condition or factor contributes to an accident.  If so, apply the increased hazard test; if not, apply the any exertion test.

If you have any questions about these cases or would like to refer a workers' compensation matter, please contact our workers' compensation attorneys.

Blake J. Hood
Partner
Direct: 904.493.3757
Email: bhood@boydjen.com

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