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Reynolds Metals Co. v. Shifflett11/26/1996
FROM THE VIRGINIA WORKERS' COMPENSATION COMMISSION
Employer, Reynolds Metals Company, appeals from an award of benefits to claimant, Sharon Shifflett, for injuries she sustained in the course of her employment. Employer disputes that claimant's injury "arose out of" her employment. We disagree and affirm the award.
I.
"An accident arises out of the employment when there is a causal connection between the claimant's injury and the conditions under which the employer requires the work to be performed." United Parcel Service v. Fetterman, 230 Va. 257, 258, 336 S.E.2d 892, 893 (1985). "The causative danger must be peculiar to the work, incidental to the character of the business, and not independent of the master-servant relationship." Id. at 258-59, 336 S.E.2d at 893. Excluded is "`an injury which cannot fairly be traced to the employment as a contributing proximate cause and which comes from a hazard to which the work would have been equally exposed apart from the employment.'" Bradshaw v. Aronovitch, 170 Va. 329, 335, 196 S.E. 684, 686 (1938) (citation omitted).
We find that the evidence supports the commission's finding that claimant's injury arose out of her employment. The causal connection between claimant's back injury and the conditions under which employer required the work to be performed is clear.Claimant worked as a scrap baler on the day of her accident. A scrap baler feeds scrap plastic into a baling machine. The baling machine is approximately two feet wide, six feet long, and twenty inches deep. It sits approximately eight inches off the floor. There is a square opening in the top of the machine, approximately twenty-two inches wide. The machine packages the scrap into square bales, similar in size to bales of hay. Once the scrap is squared, the bales must be tied. To tie the bales, the scrap baler must bend over the sidewall of the machine, the top of which is twenty-eight inches from the floor, reach into the square opening, and grasp two strings, each from a different location on the bottom of the machine, twenty inches below. The baler then pulls the strings up and across the bale and slips them into a "hook piece towards the front." No weight is attached to the strings, which are of negligible weight.
Carrying out these duties, claimant bent over the outer wall of the machine, which was about waist-high to claimant, and reached into the opening for the strings. She grasped the first string, reached further away for the second string, grasped the second string and, as she started to raise up, felt a "pull" in her back.
Claimant testified that the effort the task required is similar to the effort exerted in bending at the waist to tie a shoe but that she did not have to reach all the way to the floor. She also stated that, because of the machine's dimensions, no alternative means, such as squatting, was available to complete the task. Claimant demonstrated to the deputy commissioner the bending and reaching motion the task required.
The commission found that the movement involved was "awkward," stating
"the claimant was required to lean over a wall, bend down into the bottom of the machine approximately eight inches off the floor, then reach to grab strings. One string is further back than the other. The claimant was not simply bending over in a shoe tying motion. Although the claimant did not dispute defense counsel's comparison to tying shoes, we find that the motion involved reaching as well as bending."
In discounting the deputy commissioner's finding that "claimant's movement in retrieving the string was neither awkward nor stressful," the commission noted that "cl
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