Worker Badly Hurt – So Why Is Workers’ Comp Claim in Doubt?

An appeals court in Illinois upheld a decision to award workers’ comp benefits to a traveling employee who was hurt before he got on the road to his first daily assignment.

The question that the court answered in the employee’s favor: Did the injury arise out of and in the course of employment?

Michael Iniquez worked for the town of Cicero as a “blight inspector.” In that role, he inspected buildings for broken windows and checked the condition of paint. He also checked the condition of garages and lawns, and he made sure rubbish was not accumulating.

Worker began day in office

At the start of each workday, Iniquez reported to Cicero’s town hall, where he typically took the stairs up to his second-floor office. Once there, he would grab his work phone and download his assignments for the day.

When he was ready, he would go down the stairs, get into his town-provided vehicle, and proceed to his first inspection. He said that on a typical workday, he would go up and down those stairs three or four times.

One morning in early July of 2018, Iniquez arrived in his office to start his workday. When he left to go to his car, he slipped off the edge of the second-floor landing and fell down the stairs.

It wasn’t a minor fall. In fact, Iniquez was not able to get up afterward. An HR employee found him lying on the stairs and called an ambulance. Iniquez was later diagnosed as having a fracture of the thoracic spine as well as a right shoulder rotator cuff tear and a right knee meniscal tear.

Arbitrator: No benefits for you

When he sought workers’ comp benefits, an arbitrator said he was not entitled to them because he was not a traveling employee when he fell and his injuries did not arise out of his employment.

A workers’ comp commission reversed that decision and said Iniquez should get benefits. It said he was a traveling employee at the time of the accident and did not lose that status just because he fell at the town hall before he left to go to his first inspection site.

The commission also said that Iniquez’s act of going down the stairs from his office to his car was reasonably foreseeable and incidental to his job duties.

A lower court upheld that determination, and the town filed an appeal.

Appeals court awards workers’ comp benefits

The appeals court the lower court’s decision that Iniquez was entitled to workers’ comp benefits. It explained that to get benefits, he had to show his injury arose out of and in the course of employment.

The town told the appeals court that benefits should be denied because the injury did not arise out of Iniquez’s employment. It reminded the court of the general rule that going up and down steps “is a neutral risk and injuries resulting therefrom are not compensable under [state workers’ comp law.]” Iniquez’s injuries did not arise out of his employment because he was not exposed to more of a risk that the general public, the town said.

Iniquez was not working as a traveling employee when he fell, it insisted.

The appeals court disagreed.

It noted that the rules for traveling employees are different when it comes to deciding whether an employee was injured in the course of and arising out of employment.

He was a traveling employee

And contrary to the town’s argument, Iniquez was a traveling employee because he needed to travel away from his employer’s premises to do his job, the court said.

A traveling employee’s injury arises out of employment if the employee is injured while doing something that was “reasonable and foreseeable by the employer,” the court explained.

The commission permissibly found that Iniquez’s conduct in going down the stairs was not only reasonable and foreseeable but also incidental to his job, the court said. Thus, his injuries arose out of employment.

There was no doubt Iniquez was injured in the course of his employment, the court added, and he thus satisfied the other prong of the applicable test.

Iniquez was a traveling employee whose injuries arose out of and in the course of his employment, the court determined.

The decision to award benefits was affirmed.

Quick note for HR

Workers’ comp law is state specific, but one rule typically applies: To get benefits, the employee must show that his injury arose out of and in the course of employment.

Town of Cicero v. Workers’ Compensation Comm’n, No. 1-23-0609WC (Ill. App. Ct. 4/5/24).