Workers' comp denied for teacher following classroom fall
Despite taking place during school hours, the court ruled the accident did not arise out of the teacher’s work.
A Palm Beach County School teacher who was injured in a classroom fall after trying to stand up while his leg was asleep is not eligible for workers’ compensation, Florida’s First District Court of Appeals said, upholding a lower court judge’s denial of claims.
Steven Silberberg was denied compensability after falling and breaking his femur, even though he argued that his accident occurred while he was at work and performing work duties. He appealed Judge of Compensation Claims Carol J. Stephenson’s denial of his claim.
Silberberg was overseeing his class prior to dismissing the students for lunch, according to the Court of Appeals’ opinion. He had been sitting for approximately five minutes in the district-provided chair.
Silberberg had no feeling in his left leg and his leg gave way as he took a step, causing him to fall to the floor, according to the appellate court’s opinion.
Dr. Jose Zuniga, who performed an independent medical exam on Silberberg on behalf of his employer, found that the teacher reported occasional numbness in his left foot prior to the accident, but there was no indication that the numbness stemmed from a major medical illness, such as vascular disease or sciatic nerve injury, the court’s opinion said.
Zuniga concluded that Silberberg’s benign leg numbness prior to the fall was “most likely due to brief compression of the nerves for the left leg due to the sitting in one position,” and that he simply tried to walk too soon after standing, according to the opinion.
Silberberg hired Dr. Robert Simon to perform an independent medical review and the physician reached the same conclusion as Zuniga, the opinion said.
While both doctors found that the same incident could happen at any time, in any location, Silberberg argued that it didn’t matter whether he suffered from the same injury at home and that “‘any exertion connected with [his] employment is adequate to satisfy the legal test of causation,’” according to the opinion.
The educator relied on a 2012 First District Court of Appeals case, Caputo v. ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, which he used to support his claim that there was a presumption in favor of a compensable accident when an injury occurs at work and there is no pre-existing condition, and that only a “pre-existing condition” can be a competing cause that could trigger the “increased” hazard inquiry applied by Stephenson.
Stephenson denied compensability and Silberberg appealed.
The appellate court looked to answer whether his fall is a compensable accident under Florida’s workers’ compensation law.
“The evidence before the JCC established that Silberberg’s sitting before the fall was normal, was for a normal amount of time, was in a normal chair and ended in a typical way without Silberberg abruptly leaping to his feet. There was nothing unusual about the floor that facilitated the fall,” Judge A. S. Tanenbaum wrote on behalf of the unanimous panel. “For the JCC, then, while there was evidence that Silberberg’s sitting at work was in the chain of causation leading to his fall, Silberberg did not establish that his sitting for work, under the circumstances, was anything more than an incidental trigger of Silberberg’s idiopathic response. The same sitting outside of work was just as likely to be that trigger, which means that the sitting was not the preponderant cause, or MCC, of Silberberg’s fall.”
Judges Bradford L. Thomas and Thomas D. Winokur concurred, affirming the JCC’s conclusion that Silberberg’s fall did not “arise out of” his work and the denial of compensability.
“According to the JCC, the sitting and standing described by Silberberg were ‘routine movements’ to which Silberberg would ‘normally’ be exposed in his nonemployment life as well, so ‘[t]he risk of [Silberberg's] leg going numb existed whether at home, at work or anywhere else.’ In turn, the JCC followed this court’s en banc decision in Sedgwick CMS v. Valcourt-Williams, 271 So. 3d 1133, 1136 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) (en banc), concluding that there was no evidence that the ‘physical surroundings’ on the job in any way contributed to the risk of an injury more than they would have in nonemployment life,” Tanenbaum wrote.
Messages seeking comment were not immediately returned from Michael J. Celeste Jr. of Celeste Law Firm on behalf of Silberberg, nor from Diane H. Tutt of Conroy Simberg, who represents Palm Beach County School Board.
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