Reynolds Metals Co. v. Sharon Shifflett

COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Chief Judge Moon, Judges Fitzpatrick and Annunziata
Argued at Alexandria, Virginia
REYNOLDS METALS COMPANY and
PACIFIC EMPLOYERS INSURANCE COMPANY
MEMORANDUM OPINION * BY
v. Record No. 1029-96-3 JUDGE ROSEMARIE ANNUNZIATA
NOVEMBER 26, 1996
SHARON SHIFFLETT
FROM THE VIRGINIA WORKERS' COMPENSATION COMMISSION
Ruth Nathanson Carter (Midkiff & Hiner, on
brief), for appellants.
A. Thomas Lane, Jr., for appellee.
Employer, Reynolds Metals Company, appeals from an award of
benefits to claimant, Sharon Shifflett, for injuries she
sustained in the course of her employment. Employer disputes
that claimant's injury "arose out of" her employment. We
disagree and affirm the award.
I.
"An accident arises out of the employment when there is a
causal connection between the claimant's injury and the
conditions under which the employer requires the work to be
performed." United Parcel Service v. Fetterman, 230 Va. 257,
258, 336 S.E.2d 892, 893 (1985). "The causative danger must be
peculiar to the work, incidental to the character of the
business, and not independent of the master-servant
*
Pursuant to Code § 17-116.010 this opinion is not
designated for publication.
relationship." Id. at 258-59, 336 S.E.2d at 893. Excluded is
"``an injury which cannot fairly be traced to the employment as a
contributing proximate cause and which comes from a hazard to
which the work[er] would have been equally exposed apart from the
employment.'" Bradshaw v. Aronovitch, 170 Va. 329, 335, 196 S.E.
684, 686 (1938) (citation omitted).
We find that the evidence supports the commission's finding
that claimant's injury arose out of her employment. The causal
connection between claimant's back injury and the conditions
under which employer required the work to be performed is clear.
Claimant worked as a scrap baler on the day of her accident.
A scrap baler feeds scrap plastic into a baling machine. The
baling machine is approximately two feet wide, six feet long, and
twenty inches deep. It sits approximately eight inches off the
floor. There is a square opening in the top of the machine,
approximately twenty-two inches wide. The machine packages the
scrap into square bales, similar in size to bales of hay. Once
the scrap is squared, the bales must be tied. To tie the bales,
the scrap baler must bend over the sidewall of the machine, the
top of which is twenty-eight inches from the floor, reach into
the square opening, and grasp two strings, each from a different
location on the bottom of the machine, twenty inches below. The
baler then pulls the strings up and across the bale and slips
them into a "hook piece towards the front." No weight is
attached to the strings, which are of negligible weight.
- 2 -
Carrying out these duties, claimant bent over the outer wall
of the machine, which was about waist-high to claimant, and
reached into the opening for the strings. She grasped the first
string, reached further away for the second string, grasped the
second string and, as she started to raise up, felt a "pull" in
her back.
Claimant testified that the effort the task required is
similar to the effort exerted in bending at the waist to tie a
shoe but that she did not have to reach all the way to the floor.
She also stated that, because of the machine's dimensions, no
alternative means, such as squatting, was available to complete
the task. Claimant demonstrated to the deputy commissioner the
bending and reaching motion the task required.
The commission found that the movement involved was
"awkward," stating
the claimant was required to lean over a
wall, bend down into the bottom of the
machine approximately eight inches off the
floor, then reach to grab strings. One
string is further back than the other. The
claimant was not simply bending over in a
shoe tying motion. Although the claimant did
not dispute defense counsel's comparison to
tying shoes, we find that the motion involved
reaching as well as bending.
In discounting the deputy commissioner's finding that
"claimant's movement in retrieving the string was neither awkward
nor stressful," the commission noted that "claimant did not
replicate the exact movement for the Deputy Commissioner because
of medical restrictions." Indeed, the record shows that claimant
- 3 -
demonstrated only the bending motion involved, not the complete
task of bending and reaching. The deputy commissioner's decision
failed to address the entire task involved here, which required
more than bending. It observed:
We find that at the time of her injury,
Shifflett had performed a normal movement of
bending forward from the waist in order to
reach an object located approximately 8
inches above floor level.
* * * * * * *
[The] maneuver involved the simple act of
bending forward, and the resulting injury was
unrelated to a risk or causative hazard of
the employment.
(Emphasis added.)
We find that the evidence supports the commission's
conclusion that claimant's movement involved more than simple
bending and that, as the causative factor in the case, the
bending and reaching movement described was peculiar to the job.
See Grove v. Allied Signal, Inc., 15 Va. App. 17, 22, 421 S.E.2d
32, 35 (1992) (pipe fitter's injury resulting from bending and
reaching for pipe had origin in risk connected with employment).
Further, we find no evidence that bending and simultaneous
reaching into a baling machine in the manner described is a
hazard to which claimant would have been equally exposed apart
from her employment. Contrary to employer's contention, this
case is readily distinguished from Fetterman, where the
employee's injury resulted from his bending to tie his shoe while
he was at work.
- 4 -
II.
The only question employer presented pursuant to Rule 5A:25
was "[w]hether the [c]ommission erred as a matter of law in
finding that the claimant sustained an injury by accident arising
out of her employment." Accordingly, we decline to address
employer's additional contention, raised in its brief, that the
commission erred in awarding temporary total disability benefits
subsequent to September 12, 1995.
According, the commission's decision is affirmed.
Affirmed.
- 5 -