“The fact that the general public may contract a disease is not controlling; the test of compensability is whether the nature of the employment exposes the worker to a greater risk of the disease than the risk experienced by the general public or workers in other employments.”
How later courts described this case
- “The fact that the general public may contract a disease is not controlling; the test of compensability is whether the nature of the employment exposes the worker to a greater risk of the disease than the risk experienced by the general public or workers in other employments.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
John Mauzy Pittman, Judge, dissenting. The Commission found that although appellee’s exposure to mold in the classroom was not peculiar to her occupation as a teacher, the exposure was “peculiar or characteristic of this particular employment in that [appellee’s] employment exposed her to a greater risk of that disease.” An occupational disease must be “due to the nature of an employment in which the hazards of the disease actually exist and are characteristic thereof and peculiar to the trade, occupation, process, or employment.” (Emphasis added). Ark. Code Ann. § ll-9-601(g)(l) (1987). Although the hazard of the disease need not be characteristic of the occupation, it must at least be peculiar to the “employment” or “process” involved. Sanyo Mfg. Corp. v. Leisure, 12 Ark. App. 274 , 675 S.W.2d 841 (1984) (citing Brown Shoe Co. v. Fooks, 228 Ark. 815 , 310 S.W.2d 816 (1958)). The majority correctly states that “an occupational disease is characteristic of an occupation, process or employment where there is a recognizable link between the nature of the job performed and an increased risk in contracting the occupational disease in question.” Sanyo Mfg. Corp., 12 Ark. App. at 279 , 675 S.W.2d at 844 (emphasis added).
Here, however, appellee failed to show that the hazard to which she was exposed in the classroom was characteristic of and peculiar to her occupation as a school teacher, or that there was a link between the nature of the job performed and the increased risk. The hazard is from the place where she works and is unrelated to her employment duties or the nature of her work. In Chadwick v. Public Service Co. of N.M., 731 P.2d 968 (N.M. App. 1986), the court stated that an occupational disease results from a distinctive feature of the kind of work performed by the claimant and others similarly employed, not by the peculiar place in which the claimant happens to work. To state that conditions of the claimant’s workplace, “unrelated to the claimant’s occupation, may give rise to a compensable occupational disease would, in effect, transform the law’s protection into health insurance.” Id., 731 P.2d at 970 (emphasis added). Similarly, other jurisdictions have not classified a school teacher’s allergies, caused by exposure to irritants present in the place worked, and unrelated to the nature of the job, as an occupational disease. Lorentzen v. Industrial Comm’n of Arizona, 790 P.2d 765 (Ariz. App. 1990); Dando v. Binghamton Bd. of Educ., 490 N.Y.S.2d 360 (1985).
In Hope Brick Works v. Welch, 33 Ark. App. 103 , 802 S.W.2d 476 (1991), the claimant’s condition was caused by employment that involved a process which exposed him to alumino-silicate dust from the material from which brick was made. The court affirmed the Commission’s finding that the hazard of silicosis was characteristic of the process to which the claimant was exposed. Further, unlike the claimant in Osmose Wood Preserving v. Jones, 40 Ark. App. 190 , 843 S.W.2d 875 (1992), where the claimant’s exposure to the hazard was peculiar to his job, appellee’s exposure is unrelated to her job duties, but rather to the conditions of her workplace which are unrelated to her occupation.
I would reverse the Commission’s classification of appellee’s condition as an occupational disease and remand for the Commission to determine if appellee sustained a compensable accidental injury.
Jennings, C.J., and Rogers, J., join.