Battelle Memorial Institute v. Dicecca , 792 F.3d 214 ( 2015 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-1742
BATTELLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE, and
VIGILANT INSURANCE COMPANY,
Petitioners,
v.
SANDRA DICECCA, and
DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF WORKERS' COMPENSATION PROGRAMS,
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR,
Respondents.
PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE
BENEFITS REVIEW BOARD, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
Before
Barron, Circuit Judge,
Souter,* Associate Justice,
Lipez, Circuit Judge.
_____________________
Robert N. Dengler, with whom Flicker, Garelick & Associates,
LLP was on the brief, for petitioners.
Howard S. Grossman, with whom Grossman Attorneys At Law,
Thomas A. Tarro, III, Kris Macaruso Marotti, Tarro & Marotti Law
Firm, LLC were on the brief, for respondent DiCecca.
Matthew W. Boyle, with whom M. Patricia Smith, Solicitor of
Labor, Rae Ellen James, Associate Solicitor, Mark Reinhalter,
Counsel for Longshore, and Gary K. Stearman, Counsel for Appellate
Litigation, were on the brief, for federal respondent.
* Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
July 6, 2015
SOUTER, Associate Justice.. This case comes to us on
petition to review an award of death benefits made by the Benefits
Review Board under the Defense Base Act (DBA), 42 U.S.C. § 1651 et
seq. The recipient (respondent here) is the widow of a covered
employee stationed in Tbilisi, Georgia who died in an auto accident
while traveling by taxi to shop for groceries. The issue turns on
application of the "zone of special danger" principle, O'Leary v.
Brown-Pacific-Maxon, 340 U.S. 504, 507 (1951), and we affirm the
agency's award.
I.
Gerald DiCecca was hired by Petitioner Battelle Memorial
Institute (BMI) as a facility engineer in its Tbilisi, Georgia
laboratory, BMI being a subcontractor working for the U.S.
Department of Defense on countering the threat of biological
weapons. DiCecca's formal hours were 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday
through Friday, but, according to a colleague, "everyone [was]
always on call to one degree or another," even in the absence of
an on-call schedule. Every employee was "called on to come in
outside of normal working hours from time to time to respond to
emergencies."
BMI's laboratory included neither housing accommodations
nor a restaurant, and employees were provided instead with a
housing and utilities allowance, with no restrictions on where
- 3 -
they could live. While some had cars of their own, BMI provided
taxi vouchers up to a value of 700 (Georgian) Lari a month, payable
to a company called Lucky Cabs. These vouchers were good only
within a 25 km radius of the city, but they could be used for any
purpose, be it professional or personal, including grocery
shopping. On top of these benefits, DiCecca received a 25% salary
supplement as "hardship pay" for working where, according to his
employment contract, "the living conditions are unusually
difficult or dangerous and/or facilities are inadequate."
DiCecca's "conditions . . . and[] facilities" included
two grocery stores for food shopping. The smaller one was a five-
to-ten minute walk from his apartment, but the respondent, who
visited her husband in Tbilisi, did not consider that store "safe"
and would not eat food from it, after observing flies on the meat.
The second, which she did consider safe enough, was like a Walmart,
with a larger selection, but some 12-14 km away from DiCecca's
apartment, a roughly 20-minute taxi drive.
DiCecca was traveling to this larger grocery store in a
Lucky Cabs taxi when it was hit head-on by another car, whose
driver was apprehended on suspicion of drunk driving. DiCecca
died from his injuries.
On the widow's claim for death benefits, the
administrative law judge received evidence and held in her favor.
- 4 -
BMI appealed, and the Board affirmed the award. The petition for
our review followed, and here the Board has also appeared as a
respondent.
II.
The DBA, enacted in 1941, provides workers' compensation
coverage for those employed outside the continental United States
on national defense projects, under contracts with or approved by
the government, by extending the application of the Longshore and
Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA). 42 U.S.C. §§ 1651(a)(4)-
(5), 1651(b)(1); see also Truczinskas v. Office of Workers' Comp.
Programs, 699 F.3d 672, 674 (1st Cir. 2012). The LHWCA provides
compensation for injuries or death "arising out of and in the
course of employment." 33 U.S.C. § 902(2). In the sub-class of
cases subject to the DBA, however, this scope-of-employment
provision is modified by the "zone of special danger" doctrine set
forth in O'Leary, 340 U.S. at 507, and subsequently applied in
O'Keeffe v. Smith, Hinchman & Grylls Associates, Inc., 380 U.S.
359 (1965) (per curiam), and Gondeck v. Pan American World Airways,
Inc., 382 U.S. 25 (1965) (per curiam). Given both the scarcity of
appellate case law on the doctrine's meaning, here and in other
circuits, and the generality of the terms in which the doctrine is
set forth, we think a review of the three Supreme Court cases is
in order.
- 5 -
A.
The facts in O'Leary are remarkable. The employee was
stationed in Guam working for a government contractor. The
employer maintained a recreation spot near the shoreline, along
which ran a channel so dangerous that swimming was prohibited (and
signs were in place saying so). An employee who had enjoyed an
outing there was waiting for a bus when he saw two men signaling
for help from a reef across the channel; he dove in to swim to
their rescue and drowned. O'Leary, 340 U.S. at 505. The Deputy
Commissioner of Labor awarded death benefits, but the Ninth Circuit
reversed, treating the employee's rescue attempt as distinct from
the recreation the employing contractor had in mind and outside
the course of employment. Id. at 506.
In an opinion by Justice Frankfurter, the Supreme Court
rejected the Ninth Circuit's analysis as "too restricted an
interpretation of the act."
Workmen's compensation is not confined by
common-law conceptions of scope of employment.
The test of recovery is not a causal relation
between the nature of employment of the
injured person and the accident. Nor is it
necessary that the employee be engaged at the
time of the injury in activity of benefit to
his employer. All that is required is that
the obligations or conditions of employment
create the zone of special danger out of which
the injury arose. A reasonable rescue
attempt, like pursuit in aid of an officer
making an arrest, may be one of the risks of
the employment, an incident of the service,
- 6 -
foreseeable, if not foreseen, and so covered
by the statute. This is not to say that there
are not cases where an employee even with the
laudable purpose of helping another, might go
so far from his employment and become so
thoroughly disconnected from the service of
his employer that it would be entirely
unreasonable to say that injuries suffered by
him arose out of and in the course of his
employment. We hold only that rescue attempts
such as that before us are not necessarily
excluded from the coverage of the Act as the
kind of conduct that employees engage in as
frolics of their own.
Id. at 506-07 (citations and quotation marks omitted).
While much attention has been paid to this passage, we
find another aspect of O'Leary instructive as well, in setting the
scope of judicial review of an administrative coverage decision.
O'Leary called the agency's determination of whether a particular
injury falls within the zone of special danger a "question of
fact," describing this expansive conception of what is factual by
calling the conclusion in question one that "concerns a combination
of happenings and the inferences drawn from them." Id. at 507.
The Court acknowledged that "the inferences presuppose applicable
standards for assessing the simple, external facts" but did not
believe the determination was "appropriate for independent
judicial ascertainment as questions of law." Id. at 507-08.
Accordingly, as a factual determination, the agency's findings
applying the zone-of-special-danger doctrine are commonly reviewed
by applying the deferential "substantial evidence" test under the
- 7 -
Administrative Procedure Act. See id. at 508. So, in O'Leary,
the Court reviewed the evidence in support of the agency's award
of benefits and, while observing that it did not "compel[] th[e]
inference" drawn by the agency (and indeed could have supported
the contrary conclusion), found the evidence "consistent and
credible" enough that the agency "could rationally infer that [the
employee] acted reasonably in attempting the rescue, and that his
death may fairly be attributable to the risks of the employment."
Id.While the zone-of-special-danger doctrine was born in a
case about a very hazardous rescue attempt, it has not been limited
to circumstances of such extraordinary risk. The Supreme Court's
subsequent cases have involved employees' deaths arising out of
recreational activities (a boating mishap, and a car accident
returning from a night club). Both times, the Court ruled in
support of an award of benefits. Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, 380
U.S. 359; Gondeck, 382 U.S. 25.
Smith, Hinchman & Grylls presents another example of
exceptional facts. The employee of a government contractor in
Seoul, South Korea left the city to spend Memorial Day weekend at
a friend's lake house. Their Saturday activities were meant to
improve the beach in front of the house, for which they crossed
the lake in a small boat and filled it with sand from the other
- 8 -
side. The boat capsized on the trip back, and the employee died.
See 380 U.S. at 359; id. at 365 (Harlan, J., dissenting). The
agency awarded benefits, but the Fifth Circuit reversed. Id. at
360-61 (per curiam).
The Supreme Court reversed in its turn, and began by
emphasizing how its prior decisions "limit the scope of judicial
review of the [agency's] determination that a particular injury
arose out of and in the course of employment." Id. at 361 (citation
and quotation marks omitted); see also id. at 362 (reasonable
inferences made by the agency "may not be disturbed by a reviewing
court" (quoting Cardillo v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 330 U.S. 469,
478 (1947))). Thus the agency's award must stand so long as it is
not "irrational or unsupported by substantial evidence on the
record as a whole." Id. (citation, quotation marks, and ellipses
omitted).
On the merits, the Court repeated the "zone of special
danger" formulation and the O'Leary exegesis, as being "in accord
with the humanitarian nature of the Act." Id. It then held that
the agency's award was neither irrational nor wanting substantial
evidence in the record as a whole: the employee had been hired to
work in the "exacting and unconventional conditions of Korea"; his
transportation to and from Korea was at his employer's expense; he
worked 365 days each year, was on-call at all times, and quite
- 9 -
often worked on Saturdays and Sundays; his employer provided
neither housing nor recreation but provided a daily per diem for
his necessary expenses; the accident occurred on a short
recreational outing just thirty miles from the employer's
workplace; and the recreation might be said to benefit the
employer. See id. at 363-64. As in O'Leary, the Court observed
that it "may not have reached the same conclusion as the" agency,
id. at 363, but nevertheless affirmed the award, and cited with
approval four circuit court cases, all supporting awards for
injuries arising out of recreational activities. See O'Keeffe v.
Pan Am. World Airways, Inc., 338 F.2d 319 (5th Cir. 1964) (employee
in Grand Turk, British West Indies died in a scooter accident while
returning to base from social visit); Pan Am. World Airways, Inc.
v. O'Hearne, 335 F.2d 70 (4th Cir. 1964) (employee in San Salvador,
British West Indies died in a jeep accident while returning to
base from night club in nearby town); Self v. Hanson, 305 F.2d 699(9th Cir. 1962) (female employee in Guam was injured when another
vehicle collided with her parked car, during rendezvous with a
male employee); Hastorf-Nettles, Inc. v. Pillsbury, 203 F.2d 641(9th Cir. 1953) (employee in Alaska was injured in a car accident
while returning from Labor Day outing in another city).
The scope of coverage assumed in Smith, Hinchman &
Grylls's plenary catalog of supportive facts gained emphasis from
- 10 -
the dissenting criticism of three justices, who concentrated on
two points. First, the dissenters read the per curiam opinion as
effectively holding that "any decision made by a Deputy
Commissioner must be upheld." 380 U.S. at 366 (Harlan, J.,
dissenting, joined by Clark, White, JJ.). Second, the dissenters
argued that only an incorrect "but for" compensation rule could
justify the award of benefits in that case. See id. at 369-71.
The majority justices responded that such criticisms were
inconsistent with the "limited judicial review" available under
the statute. Id. at 364 (per curiam). They added that "this type
of determination, depending as it does on an analysis of the many
factors involved in the area of the employment, would seem to be
one peculiarly for the Deputy Commissioner." Id.The third of the trio of cases, Gondeck, arose from the
death of an employee working for Pan American Airlines in San
Salvador, British West Indies who perished in a jeep accident, in
fact the same accident at issue in the Fourth Circuit case,
O'Hearne, 335 F.2d 70, cited with approval in Smith, Hinchman &
Grylls, 380 U.S. at 364. The Pan American base had its own bar as
well as bus service to a nearby town with a night club. The
employee nevertheless took a company jeep to the club (likely
without authorization) and died in an accident during the return
trip, possibly from speeding. The agency awarded benefits, and
- 11 -
the Fifth Circuit reversed. See Gondeck, 382 U.S. at 26; United
States v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc., 299 F.2d 74, 75 (5th Cir.
1962), rev'd sub nom. Gondeck, 382 U.S. 25; O'Hearne, 335 F.2d at
70-71. The Supreme Court again reversed the Fifth Circuit. Its
discussion was brief and largely focused on procedural details not
relevant here. As to the merits, it appeared to find the case
straightforward. The Court reiterated the "limited judicial
review" of agency determinations and upheld the award under the
zone-of-special-danger doctrine set forth in O'Leary and Smith,
Hinchman & Grylls. See Gondeck, 382 U.S. at 27.
From these and the few recent appellate and
administrative cases on point, we can extract some general
principles creating a legal texture, though not a precise rule.
First, the zone-of-special-danger doctrine under the DBA works an
expansion of traditional employer liability to include coverage
for injuries without any direct causal connection to an employee's
particular job or to any immediate service for the employer. They
must simply fall within foreseeable risks occasioned by or
associated with the employment abroad. Although the requisite
"special danger" covers risks peculiar to the foreign location or
risks of greater magnitude than those encountered domestically,
the zone also includes risks that might occur anywhere but in fact
occur where the employee is injured. "Special" is best understood
- 12 -
as "particular" but not necessarily "enhanced." There is a pale
of cognizability, however, which stops short of astonishing risks
"unreasonabl[y]" removed from employment. See O'Leary, 340 U.S.
at 506-07; see also Truczinskas, 699 F.3d at 681 (DBA "is not the
equivalent of health or life insurance" (citations omitted)). Thus
administrative determinations have denied benefits, for example,
for damages from cosmetic skin peels, R.F. v. CSA, Ltd., 2009 WL
3159147, 43 BRBS 139 (2009), and asphyxiation from auto-erotic
practices, Gillespie v. Gen. Elec. Co., 21 BRBS 56 (1988).
Second, the determination of foreseeable risk is
necessarily specific to context and thus turns on the totality of
circumstances. See Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, 380 U.S. at 363-64;
O'Keeffe, 338 F.2d at 325; O'Hearne, 335 F.2d at 70-71; Self, 305
F.2d at 702-03; Pillsbury, 203 F.2d at 643; see also Kalama Servs.,
Inc. v. Office of Workers' Comp. Programs, 354 F.3d 1085, 1092
(9th Cir. 2004), cert. denied, 543 U.S. 809.
Third, and relatedly, in this corner of the law, the
agency is given deference in applying the apposite doctrine to the
particular case at hand. Accordingly, the agency's rational
determination is treated as far as possible as a finding of fact,
for which a reviewing court considers only whether the agency had
a substantial basis in the record. See O'Leary, 340 U.S. at 507-
09; Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, 380 U.S. at 361-65; Gondeck, 382
- 13 -
U.S. at 27. And when agency action extends beyond even O'Leary's
rather catholic understanding of fact-finding, its legal
determination is entitled to deference under the rule in Skidmore
v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140 (1994) (reasonable agency
interpretations have persuasive force, even if "lacking power to
control"). See Neely v. Benefits Review Bd., 139 F.3d 276, 281
(1st Cir. 1998) (citing Metropolitan Stevedore Co. v. Rambo, 521
U.S. 121, 136 (1997) (according Skidmore deference to this
agency)).
B.
We turn now to the Board's decision awarding benefits
and to its crucial passage.
The administrative law judge addressed the
proper inquiry under O'Leary, focusing on the
foreseeability of the injury given the
conditions and obligations of employment in a
dangerous locale. Decedent lived and worked
in a dangerous locale as evidenced by the
employer's payment of a hardship
allowance/danger pay. Employer provided its
employees taxi vouchers each month for use
with a specific cab company that utilized
Mercedes Benz automobiles. Employer permitted
its employees to utilize the cab service for
any reason within a certain radius. . . . [I]t
is also entirely foreseeable that an employee
will need to purchase groceries, and, given
the taxi vouchers provided by employer,
entirely foreseeable that decedent would take
a taxi to the grocery store. The fatal
accident, thus, also was a foreseeable, "if
not foreseen," consequence of riding in a taxi
in a place where the dangers of automobile
travel were anticipated by employer. Although
- 14 -
employer attempted to mitigate the danger,
employer has not cited any circumstances that
could warrant a legal conclusion that
decedent's activity was not rooted in the
conditions of his employment or was
"thoroughly disconnected" from the service of
employer. We, therefore, affirm the
administrative law judge's findings that the
zone of special danger doctrine applies and
that decedent's death is compensable under the
Act as they are rational, supported by
substantial evidence and in accordance with
law.
BRB No. 13-0378, 2014 WL 2530888, at *3 (DOL Ben. Rev. Bd. May 9,
2014) (citations omitted).
The record holds the substantial evidence that supports
these findings and ensuing conclusions. BMI assigned DiCecca to
a foreign workplace, where he was always subject to call, and
assumed provision of transportation there by taxi service limited
as to geography but for any purpose, within the scope of which
food buying was foreseeable travel with risks that were realized
in this fatal accident. These findings would suffice for
liability, but the Board mentioned another relevant condition that
supports its conclusion, though not crucial to it: BMI provided
hazardous duty pay on top of DiCecca's base salary, indicating
that reasonably foreseeable risks generally extend beyond the
conditions of American grocery shopping.1
1Indeed, BMI does not point to any particular factual error
underlying the Board's ruling. Rather, it contends that an
employee's pursuit of a "necessity" should not be considered within
- 15 -
BMI's principal contention for reversing the award is
that the zone-of-special-danger case law demands a nexus between
the employment and the activity giving rise to the injury, a
requirement to be satisfied in only two alternative ways: (1) when
the injury occurred during a reasonable recreational activity in
an isolated place with limited social opportunities; or (2) where
the site of work presented conditions enhancing the risk of injury
to some appreciable degree beyond the domestic norm. BMI says
that DiCecca's assignment here falls into neither category, and so
lacks the nexus between injury and employment.
While at a general level we hardly quarrel with the
proposition that there must be some nexus between injury and
employment, the cases are at odds with BMI's binary exclusiveness
in which the only alternative to heightened danger is recreational
activity. In its argument for this limited category, BMI focuses
the scope of employment. But, as just indicated, the record here
does not show a simple pursuit of a necessity. In any case, as
explained below, a categorical distinction between pursuit of a
necessity and optional engagement in recreation would be
irrational.
For its part, the Board presses in its brief that this case
presents a question of law and thus this court should approve the
Board's rule that injuries arising out of reasonable and
foreseeable activities are always covered by the DBA. But,
although we have engaged in totality of circumstances review, it
is really unnecessary to accept the Board's general rule as a
distillation of totality of circumstances cases or as an approach
subject to Skidmore deference. We simply have no need to resolve
this question.
- 16 -
on the Fifth Circuit's language in O'Keeffe, that on an island
"lacking in most of the social and recreational facilities usually
available to American employees, the individual's recreation is in
the service of his employer no less than in his own interest."
338 F.2d at 325. BMI goes on to emphasize similar language in
other cases for the theory that recreational activity is considered
within the scope of employment because it benefits the employer.
See Petitioners Br. at 13-17 (citing Pillsbury, Self, O'Hearne,
Gondeck, Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, and Kalama).
What does not follow, however, is that good times are
the only foreign activities that serve the employer as well as the
employee, or even that mutual benefit is necessary for an adequate
nexus in the absence of enhanced risk. To begin with, these cases
cannot be reduced to a single controlling factor, for in each case,
the application of the zone-of-special-danger doctrine turned on
the totality of circumstances. See, e.g., Smith, Hinchman &
Grylls, 380 U.S. at 363-64 (listing perhaps ten different
considerations, depending on how one counts, only one of which was
a benefit to the employer); Pillsbury, 203 F.2d at 643 (same).
And, even if these cases could be reduced to a single crux, it
would not be employer benefit, which was flatly rejected in
O'Leary. 340 U.S. at 507 ("Nor is it necessary that the employee
be engaged at the time of the injury in activity of benefit to his
- 17 -
employer."). What is more, even if employer benefit were crucial,
it is hard to imagine a better example of an activity that benefits
the employer than its employee's pursuit of safe food to stay alive
and healthy; flies on the meat are to be avoided. And, finally,
to the extent that geographic isolation in a foreign venue appears
to be doing any work in the case law, it explains why an otherwise
personal activity, like recreation, should be deemed a necessity
and thus incident to overseas employment. See, e.g., Self, 305
F.2d at 703 ("Obviously, recreation was considered a necessity for
[these] employees in Guam . . . ."). By that logic, because
grocery shopping is a necessity, it too should be considered an
incident to the employment. The short of it is that it is very
hard, perhaps impossible, to distill a rule that injuries arising
out of a night on the town are covered but not those incurred
shopping for food.
Of course, as we said, there must be a nexus between the
employment and injury: the injury must arise out of foreseeable
risks associated with employment abroad. See, e.g., Kalama, 354
F.3d at 1092 ("The ALJ also found that the presence of social clubs
serving alcohol to employees who experience lengthy periods of
isolation on the [island] creates a foreseeable risk that horseplay
might take place from time to time."); O'Hearne, 335 F.2d at 71("In the circumstances of his employment-residence, the [agency]
- 18 -
thought, [the employee] was only doing what he (might) reasonably
be expected to do. In short, that his brief exit was an incident
of the service." (internal quotation marks omitted)). Here, the
Board reasonably found that nexus satisfied.2
III.
The order of the Benefits Review Board is affirmed.
2 BMI expresses a concern that an award of benefits for
injuries arising out of activities that are "ubiquitous" (such as
grocery shopping) would eliminate any limit on liability under the
DBA. See Petitioners Br. 22-24; Reply Br. 5-6. But this argument
proves too much; recreation is a "ubiquitous" activity, and yet
recreational injuries are commonly covered. The most that can be
said in BMI's favor is that not all "ubiquitous" activities entail
employer liability. See, e.g., R.F., 2009 WL 3159147, at *5
(denying benefits for injuries arising out of an employee's
chemical peel procedure in Kuwait because the activity intended to
make the employee look good was "personal in nature," without
"genesis in his employment," and thus "so thoroughly disconnected
from his service to [the] employer" that the zone-of-special-
danger doctrine was inapplicable). The question, then, is which
"ubiquitous" activities are covered. And the answer is a case-
specific determination of foreseeable, reasonable incidence to the
foreign employment, left largely for the Board. See O'Leary, 340
U.S. at 507-08.
- 19 -