Raybol v. Louisiana State UniversityRaybol v. Louisiana State University
Carolyn RAYBOL
v.
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY.
Supreme Court of Louisiana.
*725 Benn Hamilton, Baton Rouge, for applicant.
Todd Rossi, Watson, Blanche, Wilson & Posner, Baton Rouge, for respondent.
Dissenting Opinion of Justice Lemmon March 21, 1988.
DENNIS, Justice.
This is а workers' compensation case presenting the issue of whether a dormitory custodial worker's compensation claim, resulting from an assault by a third person upon the employee as she was аctively engaged in her work duties, arises out of her employment. The trial court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment rejecting plaintiff's claim and the court of appeal affirmed without an opinion. Raybol v. Louisiana State University,
Both the plaintiff and the defendant mоved for summary judgment based on the depositions of the plaintiff and her assailant, Kenneth Rivet. The plaintiff testified that on June 20, 1984, as she was performing custodial work in a dormitory on the Baton Rouge campus of her employer, Louisiana State University, she was physically attacked and injured by Mr. Rivet. She testified that she had broken off relations with Mr. Rivet two weeks earlier after dating him for about a year. When the incident oсcurred she was working alone in an isolated area of the dormitory remote from other co-workers, and the building had been closed and locked for the summer to prevent entrance by intruders and unauthоrized persons. Mr. Rivet entered the room in which she was working without her consent and entreated her to resume their relationship. When she declined he struck her several times saying that he was getting his revenge. He desisted his attack only after struggling with male co-workers who were summoned from other parts of the building by plaintiff's cries for help. The plaintiff indicated that she did not invite Mr. Rivet's visit or provoke his attack in any way. In fact, she claimed that she was shocked and surprised by the behavior of Mr. Rivet who before had always been mild mannered. As the result of her head injuries, the plaintiff was unable to return to work and the vision in her left eye was imрaired. Mr. Rivet's testimony was consistent with the plaintiff's except that he said he lost his temper and slapped her a few times because she pushed him when he tried to embrace her, cursed him and used foul languаge in rejecting his attentions. He testified that he was informed of the plaintiff's whereabouts on the campus by one of the university's other custodial workers. He said he was generally familiar with the plaintiff's work routine bеcause he once had worked briefly at L.S.U., his mother was also employed by L.S.U. as a custodial worker, and he had visited the plaintiff at her jobsite during her lunch break on previous occasions.
The trial cоurt granted defendant's motion for summary judgment rejecting plaintiff's demands and denied plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff appealed, and the court of appeal affirmed. We granted plaintiff's application for certiorari.
An employee protected by the worker's compensation statute is entitled to receive benefits when he "receives personal injury by accident arising out of and in the сourse of his employment...." La.R.S. 23:1031. The terms arising out of, and in the course of constitute a dual requirement. The former suggests an inquiry into the character or origin of the risk while the latter brings into focus the time and place relationship between the risk and the employment. The two requirements cannot, however, be considered in isolation from each other. A strong showing by the claimant with reference to the arise-out-of requirement may compensate for a relatively weak showing on the during-course-of requirement, or vice versa. As a corollary it follows that whenever the showing with respect to both requirements is relatively weak a denial of compensation is indicatеd. Lisonbee v. Chicago Mill and Lumber Company,
Judicial experience has taught that these two elements, arising out of and in the course of, should not be understood as entirely separate requirements to be rigidly and independently exacted. Rather, they should be understood simply as closely intertwined issues that may usefully illuminate the common sense, practical question of whether the injury bears some significant relationship to the business operation. Lisonbee v. Chicago Mill and Lumber Company, supra, at 9. Malone & Johnson, *727 Workers' Compensation Law and Practice, 13 Civ.Law.Treat. §§ 144, 145 (2d ed.1980).
An accident that happens while an employee is actively engaged in the performance of his duties during working hours will be regarded as having occurred in the course of his employment. Chapman v. Belden Corp.,
When the employee is clearly in the course of employment because he is actively engaged in the performance of his duties, preparing himself for his work, or taking a short permissible rest from his labors, his injury or death caused by the assault of a third person arises out of employment regardless of the nature of difficulty that prompted the attack or the identity of his assailant. See Kern v. Southport Mill,
Applying these precepts to the present case, we сonclude that, under the facts which may be reasonably inferred and decided in favor of the plaintiff for purposes of considering defendant's motion for summary judgment, the plaintiff's injury by assault happened in the сourse of employment and arose out of her employment. She was clearly within the course of employment because she was actively engaged in her prescribed work duties on her emplоyer's premises. Her injury arose out of employment because she was so squarely in the course of employment when the attack occurred and she had not invited the attack through any willful intention to injurе another. In fact, it may be inferred that she was as innocent of having caused or invited the unwarranted assault as if the perpetrator had been a complete stranger to her. Moreover, the еvidence of record may be construed to imply that the circumstances under which the employee worked contributed to and enhanced the danger of the assault. The plaintiff was required to work alone in a closed dormitory in an area remote from her co-workers. This type of setting creates a high degree of risk of an attack upon a lone female employee. Further, the evidence implies that one or more of the employer's custodial workers contributed to the danger of the assault by informing the assailant of the plaintiff's work location in the building and by assisting him in gaining access to her by unlocking a door to the dormitory.
Although plaintiff is entitled to a reversal of the summary judgment in favor of defendant, she is not entitled to a summary judgment in her favor awarding worker's compensation. The party moving for summаry *728 judgment has the burden of showing the absence of a genuine issue as to any material fact, and where the trial court is presented with the choice of reasonable inferences to be drawn from subsidiary fаcts contained in the evidence to be considered with the motion, these reasonable inferences must be viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion. Vermilion Corp. v. Vaughn,
For the reasons assigned, the judgment of the court of appeal is reversed and the case is remanded to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
MARCUS and LEMMON, JJ., dissent and assign reasons.
COLE, J., respectfully dissents.
MARCUS, Justice (dissenting).
I am of the opinion that plaintiff's injury did not arise out of her employment. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
LEMMON, Justice, dissenting.
I agree that the course of employment and the arising out of employment requirements for а compensable injury should not be treated as entirely separate requirements and that a strong showing of one will make up for a relatively weak showing of the other. Nevertheless, an assault does not even make a weak showing of arising out of employment when there is a total absence of any relationship between the employment and the origin of the risk. When the risk of assault has an exclusively рersonal origin, the injury is not compensable.[1]
The risk of this assault arose out of plaintiff's domestic or private life, rather than her work life, and had no relationship whatsoever with her employment. The origin оf the assault being purely personal, the employment contributed nothing to the incident.
The positional risk doctrine would justify plaintiff's recovery if she had been assaulted by a student or by a roving lunatic.[2] However, because the positional risk theory applies only to neutral risks and not to еxclusively personal risks, plaintiff cannot recover under this theory. 1 A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation § 11.21 (1985).
NOTES
Notes
[1] An assault arises out of the employment (1) if the risk of assault was increased because of the nature оr setting of the work or (2) if the basis of the assault had its origin in the work. Assaults for private reasons do not arise out of the employment. 1 A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation § 11.00 (1985).
[2] Under the positional risk doctrine, an injury arises оut of employment if it would not have occurred but for the fact that the conditions and obligations of employment placed the employee in the position where he was injured by some neutral force that was neither associated with the employment nor personal to the employee. 1 A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation § 6.50 (1985).