Where do we stand with regard to compensability of trip and fall cases since the 2019 Valcourt-Williams decision? Two recent First District Court of Appeal decisions attempt to clear up any confusion.

In Silberberg, the First District Court of Appeal wrote: “Then there is Valcourt-Williams, about which there has been some misunderstanding with regard to its scope and significance. As we see it, Valcourt-Williams involved an otherwise unremarkable trip-and-fall-at-work accident that happened to occur during a comfort break and involve the employee’s own dog as a tripping hazard.” The court described Valcourt-Williams as “a narrow, trip-and-fall/comfort-break-accident case.” In Soya, Judge Bilbrey said: “[t]he majority opinion and my dissent in Sedgwick CMS v. Valcourt-Williams, 271 So.3d 1133 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) (en banc), unfortunately created confusion about what is a compensable workplace accident. The majority opinion here helps resolve that confusion, and I join it in full.” In the Soya opinion, the court said that Valcourt-Williams only overruled four outlier cases with injuries too attenuated from employment for the work to be the major contributing cause. So while we may have assumed that Valcourt-Williams was meant to convey a shift in the compensability analysis, the court has made it clear that was not the case.

The Silberberg case involved a teacher who was sitting for less than five minutes when he stood up and fell, suffering a fracture. According to the claimant, his legs went numb while he was sitting. Both IME physicians opined that the numbness was a “benign” condition that could have occurred anywhere. The First DCA agreed with the Judge of Compensation Claims, who had concluded that the claimant’s injury did not arise out of his work, even though the fall occurred at work and while he was engaged in work. 

In a lengthy analysis, the court focused on the 1994 amendments relative to the analysis of causation and case law thereafter. They described the Valcourt-Williams decision as a “rejuvenation of decades-old requirement, made clear by the 1994 statutory amendments, that employees separately prove work causation, even when the accident happens during a comfort break at work.” The court went on to say that compensability always turns on whether the employment lead to the risk of the injury. 

If an accident occurs and does not involve the comfort break, only the presence of an idiopathic condition would trigger the “increased hazard” test. In Silberberg, the judge found that the claimant’s idiopathic numbness contributed to the fall. The judge then applied the increased hazard test to determine if sitting for work was the cause of the fall. Therefore, because sitting was not an exertion, yet an incidental trigger of his idiopathic response, it was not the major contributing cause of the claimant’s fall. 

The court differentiated the Caputo v. ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, 93 So.3d 1097 (Fla. 1st DCA 2012) case by pointing out that Caputo was sawing shelves at the time of his injury, which was a causal connection between his work and his accident, where there was “no other ascertainable cause.” In Caputo, there was no evidence of a personal condition or risk that would have contributed to the fall, therefore, the claimant did not have to satisfy the any exertion test.

The Soya case involved a claimant (with no idiopathic or pre-existing condition) who was leaving work, walking across carpeted floor, wearing rubber-soled shoes, carrying non-work items and walking at a normal pace. She could not recall exactly how her accident occurred, but she fell into a door. An engineer retained by the employer/carrier inspected the floor and found no abnormalities and said that it was slip-resistant. The lower court judge relied on the Valcourt-Williams case and denied compensability, holding that the injury did not arise out of employment because “an accident is compensable under Valcourt-Williams only if the employment necessarily exposed the claimant to conditions that would substantially contribute to the risk of injury to which the claimant would not normally be exposed during her non-employment life.” The First DCA disagreed and held that the increased hazard analysis only applies where there is a contributing cause outside of employment (i.e., the dog). However, when the accident’s cause is unknown, it is error to deny compensability on the grounds that the accident could have occurred elsewhere. Soya was reversed and remanded. 

In the Soya opinion, the court clarified that in cases where a claimant is injured while engaged in work activities and there are no pre-existing conditions or competing causes of an injury, then work is the major contributing cause of same. Under the premises rule, injuries at the workplace are compensable if the injury occurred while performing activities incidental to the job, such as going into work or leaving work. 
 

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