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Humboldt Community Schools v. Fleming12/22/1999
ell to the additional dimension of the impact of the OBE controversy on Fleming's personal and religious life. (There was testimony that telephone calls directed at OBE issues were made to the Fleming home, where his family became involved; in addition, Fleming's deeply held Christian beliefs were publicly questioned.) The deputy concluded:
From the evidence presented, it is . . . found that the stress experienced by David, especially from the OBE controversy, when viewed objectively and not as David perceived them, were of greater magnitude than the day-to-day mental stresses school administrators or school superintendents experience routinely. The parties in this case deposed no less than seven other school superintendents from around the state located in similar rural or small community school districts. Although all of them described their own personal experiences with local school controversies, including OBE, all agreed that the type of stress and the personal attacks David experienced were unusual compared to the day-to-day stresses they routinely experience in their jobs. Their day-to-day routine stresses involve general administrative duties; working more than a 40-hour week; dealing with the public; conducting meetings; handling personnel problems; and coping with budget problems. However, the enormous time and concentration involved in having to deal with a full-blown public controversy and highly personal attacks, even to the extent of attacks on his religious beliefs, were beyond the norm and extremely stressful and difficult to handle even for school district superintendents.
Humboldt Schools points to two post-Dunlavey cases to support its argument that the proof did not meet the test we adopted in that case. Those cases are City of Cedar Rapids v. Board of Trustees, 572 N.W.2d 919 (Iowa 1998), and Moon v. Board of Trustees, 548 N.W.2d 565 (Iowa 1996). In those cases, we extended the Dunlavey test to police officers' claims for accidental disability benefits under Iowa Code chapter 411.
Both City of Cedar Rapids and Moon involved claims for mental/mental injuries in the context of police officers' work. The issue was whether those officers' work and the stress they experienced satisfied the Dunlavey test. Humboldt Schools points to the fact that Moon denied recovery for an alleged mental/mental injury because the claimant failed to establish the incidents relied on were of greater magnitude than the day-to-day mental stress experienced by other police officers. Moon, 548 N.W.2d at 569. In Moon, however, we did not engage in a qualitative analysis of the evidence (mainly testimony by other officers comparing claimant's experience with day-to-day experience of other officers). Rather, recognizing the closely circumscribed scope of our review in such cases, we looked at the record to see if substantial evidence supported the agency's decision which was to deny benefits. We held it did. Id. at 569-70. In City of Cedar Rapids we held substantial evidence supported the board's finding that the claimant had established his case. City of Cedar Rapids, 572 N.W.2d at 925-26. Neither Moon nor City of Cedar Rapids control our disposition here; those cases turned solely on the question of whether the record supported the finding of the agency. In both cases we held that it did.
In the present case we believe there is substantial evidence in the record to support the industrial commissioner's finding under the Dunlavey test. Therefore, we affirm the district court on that issue.
VI. The Record Supplementation Issue.
Humboldt Schools contends the district court abused its discretion in not allowing it to supplement the record in the judicial
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