JOSHUA ECKELBERG , Applicant

SCIENTIFIC MOLDING, Employer

WAUSAU UNDERWRITERS INS CO, Insurer

An administrative law judge (ALJ) for the Worker's Compensation Division of the Department of Workforce Development issued a decision in this matter. A timely petition for review was filed.

The commission has considered the petition and the positions of the parties, and it has reviewed the evidence submitted to the ALJ. Based on its review, the commission agrees with the decision of the ALJ, and it adopts the findings and order in that decision as its own.

The findings and order of the administrative law judge are affirmed.

Dated and mailed December 20, 2001
eckejo . wsd : 101 : 8   ND § 3.34

/s/ David B. Falstad, Chairman

/s/ James A. Rutkowski, Commissioner

The applicant testified he tripped as he walked though footwide, quarter-inch thick plastic sheets hung as a drapery in a doorway in the employer's premises. However, two supervisors testified that when the applicant initially described how he was hurt, he simply said his knee "popped" and went out, and that the applicant subsequently wanted to add the detail about tripping. The supervisor's also agreed the applicant fell 10 to 15 feet from the draped doorway. In addition, as the ALJ accurately describes in her decision, the applicant has not been completely consistent--to his doctors and to the employer--about exactly how the fall occurred. The ALJ, simply put, was left with doubt about whether the applicant actually tripped in the draped doorway. Consequently, the ALJ denied compensation, on the theory that this was an idiopathic or unexplained fall.

The commission recently considered the doctrine of idiopathic falls in Kempfer v. Madison Metropolitan School District, WC Case No. 1999-045789 (August 10, 2001):

"...'Idiopathic' in this context means some force or thing peculiar to an individual. In worker's compensation, an injury is idiopathic when it arises from a force or source solely personal to the individual.

"The term is best understood in its most common usage -- an idiopathic fall. An idiopathic fall may occur when a person simply falls while walking on an unslippery, level surface at work, not due to any hazard or danger of employment, but instead due to a disease, physical disability, or condition personal to the injured worker. Briggs & Stratton v. ILHR Department, 43 Wis. 2d 398, 404-07 (1969). Such an accident or fall, even though occurring while a worker is performing services for an employer, does not arise out of employment as is required under Wis. Stat. § 102.03(1)(e). In addition, an `unexplained fall,' which is clearly attributable to neither an idiopathic fall nor evidence of a cause related to employment, is not compensable simply because it occurred while the worker is performing services. Id.

"On the other hand,

'it has been said accidents arise out of employment if the conditions or obligations of the employment create a zone of special danger out of which the accident causing the injury arose. Stated another way an accident arises out of employment when by reason of employment the employee is present at a place where he is injured through the agency of a third person, an outside force, or the conditions of the location constituting a zone of special danger.'

Cutler-Hammer Inc. v. Industrial Commission, 5 Wis. 2d 247, 254 (1958).  

"In cases of idiopathic falls and non-idiopathic but unexplained falls not resulting from a 'zone of danger,' then, the employer is not liable for injuries caused by the fall. However, where the fall occurs while the applicant is in a zone of special danger, it 'arises out of employment' and is compensable. See, generally, Kraynick v. Industrial Comm., 34 Wis. 2d 107 (1967) and Briggs & Stratton v. ILHR Department, 43 Wis. 2d 398, 404-07 (1969).

On appeal, the applicant points to the facts of the Kempfer case, where the commission found that a worker who slipped in a doorway and injured her thumb on a door was injured in a zone of special danger. As the respondent explains, however, Kempfer does not require payment of compensation whenever a worker implicates a doorway in explaining his accident. In Kempfer, the presiding ALJ, quite reasonably based on the record in that case, believed the injured worker in fact hurt her thumb when she slipped going through a doorway. Here, the commission, like the ALJ, is left with considerable doubt as to whether the applicant actually tripped going through the draped doorway, or even that the draped doorway had anything to do with his injury.

The applicant also points out that no doctor has given an explanation of some underlying weakness or condition that could have caused the fall. That may be so. However, explained falls which do not occur in zones of special danger are still noncompensable. See, Briggs & Stratton v. ILHR Department, supra.

cc: 
Attorney Gerald N. Gust
Attorney Melissa A. Kirschner

Appealed to Circuit Court. Affirmed July 26, 2002. Appealed to the Court of Appeals. Affirmed per curiam March 4, 2003. Petition for Review denied, May 5, 2003.

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