There has been much discussion and much litigation in the worker's compensation area since 2005, when the Missouri legislature, under the Blunt administration, made several changes to the Workers' Compensation Law. Those changes included narrowing the definitions of "injury", "accident", and "injury arising out of and in the course of"; and changing the Court's interpretation of the statutes from a liberal statutory construction to a strict statutory construction.
Recently, the Court of Appeals, Southern District, overturned a final award of the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission which had denied benefits to a registered nurse who suffered chronic tendonitis of the peroneal tendon, which was caused in part by calcifications in the tendons of her foot which required surgery. Pile v. Lake Regional Health System, 321 S.W.3d 463 (Mo. App. S.D. 2010). Her physician opined that her work at the hospital was the prevailing factor of her injury and was consistent with another doctor's determination that walking caused Claimant's tendonitis. The Commission had found that had the Claimant not been exposed to excess walking, as her job required, she would not have sustained injury. However, the Commission inappropriately found that because she was also exposed to walking outside of her employment that her injury was not compensable under workers' compensation law.
The Appellate Court held that under the "strict statutory construction" requirements, in situations such as this, where the work nexus is clear, there is no need to consider whether the worker would have been equally exposed to the risk in normal non-employment life. Only if the hazard or risk is unrelated to the employment is it necessary to determine whether the claimant is equally exposed to the same hazard or risk outside of employment.
The risk or hazard to which the Claimant, Denise Pile, was exposed due to her employment was the development of brittle bones in her foot due to tendonitis, which in turn was caused by the prolonged walking required by her job duties as a nurse. Thus, there was a clear connection between the risk or hazard of injury, the injury itself and her employment. The Court explained that to hold that a claimant may not recover unless her employment exposed her to any risk that she was not exposed to in everyday life would eviscerate almost any claim for workers' compensation. The legislature could not have intended such an absurd result.
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