The following is a reprint from "THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL"
CLAIMANT SNEEZES WAY TO WORKERS' COMP BENEFITS
(Injury Happened While Holding Back Sneeze During Meeting)

By Danielle N. Rodier

An employee was engaged in furthering his employer's business interests when he tried to hold back a sneeze during a business meeting, tearing his retina, the Commonwealth Court has ruled.

Giving a broad interpretation to what kind of injury can get an employee workers' compensation benefits, the three-judge panel in Carroll v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board said because claimant Russell Carroll was on his employer's premises doing his job when he was injuries, he could be compensated for losing vision in his left eye when his retina tore.

This incident that led to Carroll's loss of vision occurred on July 10, 1995. On that day, Carroll, director of administrative computer center for the University of Pennsylvania was attending a meeting with his boss, Carl Abrahamson, and five other directors, Commonwealth Court Judge Jess Jiuliante said in the court opinion.

About half an hour through the meeting, Carroll, who was sitting at a table with five or six other people, felt a sneeze coming on. Not wanting to spread germs, Carroll tried unsuccessfully to hold the sneeze back. Jiuliante said that "after the sneeze took place, [Carroll] felt pressure in his head and within 30 seconds to a minute, felt a pain like a rubber band had struck his left eye."

The next morning at work, Carroll covered his right eye to look at someone but could only see that person from the waist down.

Everything in the upper portion was black. Carroll told Abrahamson about the injury and then sought medical attention.

Carroll filed a claim petition for specific loss benefits for the loss of his left eye as a result of a work injury in January 1996. The injury was described as a detached left retina. Penn Filed an answer stating that the injury was not work-related.

A workers' compensation judge heard evidence from Carroll's treating physician, Dr. Michael Maizel, who testified that he observed nothing wrong with Carroll's eyes during an exam three days prior to the incident. The day after the meeting, Maizel said, Carroll had two retinal tears in the interior portion of his left eye.

Another doctor testified on Carroll's behalf that his visual acuity for his left eye had been only at light-perception level and that the condition was a direct result of the sneeze suppression.

The WCJ granted Carroll's petition, awarding him 275 weeks of specific loss benefits for the loss of his left eye.

However, the Workers' Compensation Appeal Board reversed, finding that although Carroll was on Penn's premises when the accident occurred, there was no evidence that the suppression of the sneeze was caused by a condition of those premises.

On appeal, the Commonwealth Court found that the WCAB made a mistake in its ruling.

The WCAB cited the Superior Court's 1995 decision Gertz v. Temple University and Section 301(c)(1) of the Workers' Compensation Act in ruling that a compensable injury occurs when an employee is on employer's premises, is required to be there by the nature of his or her employment and sustains an injury caused by the premises.

Jiuliante said the relevant factor in the Gertz court's decision was that the claimant was not in the furtherance of her employer's business when she was injured. But the Commonwealth Court believed Carroll was furthering Penn's business interests when he sustained his injury.

Part of Carroll's job was to attend meetings regarding the installation of computer hardware and software. It was at such a meeting that he suppressed the sneeze.

Jiuliante then looked to the way previous Commonwealth Court and Supreme Court decisions have defined the term "injury" in the workers' compensation context.

The high court said in Kohler v. McCrory Stores that an injury is considered work-related when it occurs on the employer's premises. And in City of New Castle v. WCAB (Salie), the Commonwealth Court recognized that an employee may be doing something other than assigned work and yet the continuity of employment is not broken unless he or she is doing something completely foreign to the job.

In that case, an employer contracted fatal meningitis by kissing a coworker on the cheek before she left on maternity leave. The court decided that the decedent's good-bye kiss "was neither foreign to his employment not did it constitute an abandonment thereof."

Carroll's sneeze suppression was a comparable situation, Jiuliante said.

"This court believes that the circumstances in the case at bar clearly, it not unquestionably, indicate that [Carroll] was in the furtherance of [Penn's] affairs at the time of the injury. [Carroll] was involved in a meeting with his boss and his peers at the time of the injury," Jiuliante wrote.

"His attempt to suppress a sneeze during that meeting in order to avoid spreading germs to his CO-employees cannot be considered either an action foreign to his employment or an action in abandonment thereof. As a result, this court concludes that [Carroll's] injury occurred while he was in the course of his employment and, therefore, is compensable under Section 301(c)(1) of the act."