Court reverses prior decision and holds that robbery of a liquor store clerk at gunpoint was an abnormal working condition and a compensable psychiatric injury.

The Workers’ Compensation Judge granted the claim petition, concluding that the claimant met his burden of proving that he was subjected to abnormal working conditions when he was robbed at gunpoint while working for a liquor store. The Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board affirmed. However, the Commonwealth Court reversed (See, PA Liquor Control v. WCAB (Kochanowicz), 29 A.3^rd 105 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2011)), noting that the employer gave the claimant training specifically related to robberies and theft, and that there was evidence of the frequency of robberies in the employer’s stores. The court concluded that the claimant could have anticipated being robbed at gunpoint at work and that this was a normal condition of his employment.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted the claimant’s appeal of this decision. On remand, the Commonwealth Court held that the Judge’s decision described a singular, extraordinary event occurring during the claimant’s work shift that caused his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which supported the Judge’s legal conclusion that the specific armed robbery was not a normal working condition. In reversing themselves, the court was guided by the Supreme Court’s decision in Payes v. WCAB (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania State Police), 79 A.3d 543 (PA 2013), in which the Court held that psychiatric injury cases are “highly fact sensitive” and that the abnormal working conditions analysis does not end when it is established that a claimant generically belongs to a profession that involves a certain level of stress.

_{Case Law Alerts, 2^nd Quarter, April 2015}

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