Appeals court upholds LU employee’s award

Four years and a day after she broke her ankle, the state appeals court in Kansas City ruled Kathy Narens should receive worker’s compensation benefits from Lincoln University.

In an 18-page opinion, the three-judge panel ruled the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission didn’t make a mistake in its Sept. 1, 2015, award when it “found that Narens’ injury arose out of and in the course of employment because her ‘work for (Lincoln) daily exposed her to this increased risk.’”

The accident happened April 11, 2012, as Narens, an administrative assistant, was leaving her job in the Dawson Hall Annex at the end of the day.

The ruling noted she had stepped to the right to avoid some students heading toward her on the narrow sidewalk, and “her right foot landed on a steep edge of the sidewalk and turned. As her right ankle turned, Narens overcompensated to her left, fell, and broke her left ankle.”

Both Narens and Lincoln presented the commission’s administrative law judge with photographs showing a drop-off between the sidewalk and the grass next to it.

LU argued to the appeals court the commission erred in awarding benefits to Narens because they should have determined “the risk source of Narens’s injury was walking,” that her injury occurred after work and the benefits award was not supported by competent substantial evidence.

But the commission’s law judge determined on March 25, 2015, that “there is nothing to suggest that the cause of the fall was anything other than the condition of the crowded sidewalk and the lower level adjacent ground which … Narens was in effect trying to straddle when she fell injuring her left ankle.”

Answering LU’s first claim, that Narens’ injury occurred because she was walking, the court opinion written by Judge Cynthia L. Martin said: “Narens was not injured because she was walking. She was injured because while walking, she encountered a steep drop off on the sidewalk — a risk source that she would not have been equally exposed to outside of the workplace in normal nonemployment life.”

Lincoln also argued it shouldn’t have to pay benefits because the accident wasn’t work-related.

But the court ruled, “Lincoln has not cited any authority (other court case) for the proposition that an employee must be engaged in a work-related activity when injured in order to receive workers’ compensation benefits.”