Employee who tripped over her dog at home is denied workers’ comp benefits

A Florida court has ruled that an employee working from home who tripped over her dog while reaching for a coffee cup in her kitchen and was injured was not entitled to workers’ compensation benefits because her injury did not “arise” out of her employment.

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The case

Tammitha Valcourt-Williams, a workers’ compensation claims adjuster for Sedgwick CMS, was allowed to work from her home. According to Valcourt-Williams, one morning, after she had been working for three hours, she went downstairs for a cappuccino.  Valcourt-Williams said that as she reached to get a cup, she fell over one of her two dogs and injured her knee, hip, and shoulder.

Because she had a work-from-home arrangement, and because her fall had occurred during working hours, Valcourt-Williams sought workers’ compensation benefits.

Sedgwick denied the claim, contending that Valcourt-Williams’ injuries did not arise out of her employment.

After a hearing, the Judge of Compensation Claims (JCC) sided with  Valcourt-Williams. The JCC determined the injury was compensable, concluding that the work-from-home arrangement meant that Sedgwick had “imported the work environment into the claimant’s home and the [c]laimant’s home into the work environment.”

Sedgwick appealed.

The parties agreed that Valcourt-Williams’ injuries had occurred in the course and scope of her employment given that she was injured during work hours, her home was where she “would reasonably be,” and her coffee break was a permissible “comfort break.” They disagreed as to whether the injury was “arising out of” Valcourt-Williams’ employment.

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The court’s decision

The court reversed.

In its decision, the court explained that an accidental injury or death “arises out of” employment if work performed in the course and scope of employment was “the major contributing cause” of the injury or death. To be compensable, the court continued, an injury must “arise out of employment in the sense of causation and be in the course of employment in the sense of continuity of time, space, and circumstances.”

Put differently, the court said, the “arising out of” limitation required “that the risks that caused [c]laimant’s accident and injuries be work-related.” An accident was compensable only if “the employment necessarily expose[d] claimant to conditions that would substantially contribute to the risk of injury and to which the claimant would not normally be exposed during [the claimant’s] non-employment life.”

In the court’s opinion, the issue was not whether Valcourt-Williams’ “home environment” had become her “work environment” but whether her employment — wherever it was — necessarily exposed her to conditions that “substantially” contributed to the risk of injury.

Here, the court continued, the relevant risk was that Valcourt-Williams might trip over her dog while reaching for a coffee cup in her kitchen. The court reasoned that risk existed whether Valcourt-Williams was at home working or whether she was at home not working. “It existed before Valcourt-Williams took her job, and it will exist after her employment ends (so long as she maintains a home with a dog).”

Finding no “occupational causation” in Valcourt-Williams’ case because features of Valcourt-Williams’ “non-employment life” — her dog, her kitchen, her reaching for a coffee cup — had caused the accident, the court reversed.

The case is Sedgwick CMS v. Valcourt-Williams, No. 1D17-96 (Fla. Ct. App. April 5, 2019).

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This article first appeared on Law.com, a sister publication of PropertyCasualty360.