A United Airlines Flight attendant is awarded benefits for dislocated shoulder
A United Airlines Flight attendant’s act of taking her jacket off and putting it back on during a long, out-of-town delay between flights, is both reasonable and foreseeable conduct as a traveling employee. Therefore, an injury sustained while putting on her jacket arises out of and in the course of her employment.
A Commission majority awarded temporary total disability, permanent partial disability and medical expenses to an airlines employee who injured her shoulder while putting on her jacket in the employee lounge. The majority concluded that the claimant was a traveling employee, and that under the traveling employee analysis, she established that she sustained a compensable accident. The majority further found that the claimant’s condition was causally related to the accident.
A flight attendant’s act of taking her jacket off and putting it back on during a long, out-of-town delay between flights is both reasonable and forseeable conduct as a traveling employee. Therefore, an injury sustained while putting on her jacket as the conclusion of her delay arises out of and in the course of her employment.
The claimant a flight attendant, testified that she had a four-hour flight delay in Phoenix. During the delay, she waited in the employee lounge, where she relaxed, read, and talked with other employees. An agent then came into the lounge and told her to hurry up and help get the flight out. The arbitrator denied benefits. In reversing, the Commission explained that the arbitrator erred in not applying the traveling employee analysis. At the time of the accident, the claimant resided in San Francisco and was waiting on a flight delay in Phoenix. Therefore, she was a traveling employee. Applying the traveling employee analysis, the Commission concluded that the claimant’s injury arose out of and in the course of her employment.
The test for determining whether an injury to a traveling employee arose out of and in the course of employment is reasonableness of the conduct in which the employee was engaged and whether such conduct might normally be anticipated or foreseen by the employer. In this case, the claimant’s conduct in putting on her coat was both reasonable and foreseeable, as she was a flight attendant, had been waiting for several hours in a flight delay, and took her coat of during the delay. She put her coat on when it was time to return to her duties. The Commission noted that unlike the standard applied to non-traveling employees, the claimant need not sow that the injury was connected or incidental to her employment or that she was exposed to a greater risk than the general public.
The Commission further found that the claimant established that her condition was causally related to the work-related accident. Although she had approximately 13 prior dislocations in her in her right shoulder, she testified,
credibly, that her last shoulder dislocation was approximately 10 years ago. Also, the medical records reflected that the claimant consistently reported her last shoulder dislocation, prior to the present accident, as 10 years ago. Relying, on the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision in Sisbro Inc v. Industrial Commission, the Commission concluded that although the claimant was susceptible and predisposed to sustaining dislocations in her right shoulder, the act of putting on her coat still caused her injury and was therefore compensable under the WCA.
A dissenting commissioner argued that the claimant had a preexisting condition that caused her to repeatedly dislocate her shoulder. The dissent found persuasive the opinion of a testifying doctor, who opined that the claimant suffered from traumatic instability of the shoulder and that the claimant’s preexisting “Hills-Sachs” lesion, and not work, caused her dislocation.
