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Davenport v. City and County of Honolulu12/30/2002
his time card "fell outside the boundaries defining his ultimate work." Id. at 130-31, 906 P.2d at 123-24. In Mitchell, however, her injury was compensable because the discipline arose from her performance of her duty as a teacher to maintain classroom control. Mitchell, 85 Hawaii 256, 942 P.2d at 520. We held that " he dispositive question is whether the conduct that gave rise to the disciplinary action is conduct within or outside the course of employment." Id.
The ICA then turned to legislative history to support its conclusion that psychological injuries resulting from personnel actions arise out of employment. It is apparent that the legislature considered extending the amendment to exclude personnel actions, but decided against it and intentionally failed to address the issue in its amendment. The ICA's reading of Mitchell and the amendment to mean that "HRS § 386-3 [thus] covers psychological injuries arising out of non-disciplinary promotions and demotions[,]" however, is over-inclusive. The ICA stated that " nce an etiological connection between non-disciplinary personnel action and psychological injury established, it . . . a compensable claim." Davenport I, No. 23141, slip op. at 26. This is but the first step in the analysis. Chapter 386 covers only those injuries that "arise out of and in the course of employment." HRS § 386-3. Thus, once an etiological connection between the personnel action and the injury is established, the court must determine whether the activity that gave rise to the personnel action is work-related.
3. The "Unitary" Test
In determining what injuries arise out of employment, we have adopted a "unitary" test, which considers whether there is a sufficient work connection to bring the accident within the scope of the statute. First articulated in Royal State National Insurance Co. v. Labor and Industrial Relations Appeal Board, 53 Haw. 32, 487 P.2d 278 (1971), the work connection approach simply requires the finding of a causal connection between the injury and any incidents or conditions of employment. Chung [v. Animal Clinic, Inc.], 63 Haw. [642,] 648, 636 P.2d [721,] 725 [(1981)] (citations omitted). The unitary work connection test was formally adopted as the correct means of interpreting and applying HRS § 386-3 in Chung. Id. at 649, 636 P.2d at 726. Tate, 77 Hawaii at 103, 881 P.2d at 1249.
"An injury is said to arise in the course of the employment when it takes place within the period of employment, at a place where the employee reasonably may be, and while he [or she] is fulfilling his [or her] duties or engaged in something incidental thereto." Id. at 103-04, 881 P.2d at 1249-50 (quoting 1 A. Larson's Workers' Compensation Law § 14.00 (1993)) (emphasis added). The court went on to explain that in determining whether an activity is "incidental to work," the word incident "contains an element of the usual and reasonable, both as to the needs to be satisfied and as to the means used to satisfy them." Id. Thus, any activity that is necessary to complete the ultimate work clearly arises out of the work and is compensable. The tasks that are not required by the employer to fulfill the employee's duties are those that fall into the gray area of compensability requiring the analysis of whether it is "incidental" to the ultimate work.
The ICA declined to apply the "unitary" test, stating:
On this argument, we leave to one side the query whether aspiring to advancement should, as a matter of policy, be considered an intrinsic incident of employment. We instead observe that the Tate analysis militates in support of the Board's determination only where, as here, the promotions grievance procedure is a formal
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