GQ Corner

Q. The claimant is a 27-year-old-male and on his first day working on road crew, he reports heat exhaustion.  He was sent back home to Houston.  No treatment was sought until one week later when he was taken off work for six days. He was diagnosed with dehydration.  Is heat exhaustion or dehydration, without renal failure, compensable?

A. The Appeals Panel has indicated that heat exhaustion may be compensable where the evidence reflects that it is a proper diagnosis causally related to the employment and that the employment placed the claimant at greater risk than the general public (or than employment, generally) of developing heat exhaustion. See APD 990219. Ultimately, it is a fact question that will hinge on the totality of the evidence. I would note that in the cited AP decision, the Appeals Panel affirmed the ALJ determination of non-compensability by noting, among other things, that claimant did not seek evaluation/treatment until approximately eight hours after her shift ended.

Q. I have two claims in question, one employee bent over to pick up a pen he had dropped, and when he bent over to get it, he heard his back pop. The second employee bent over  a cabinet and heard her back pop. Are these compensable?

A. For an injury like those you describe to be non-compensable they have to be truly idiopathic. In other words, they have to be coincidental and unrelated to any activity performed by the employee or any instrumentality owned or used by the employee in her job. The incidents you describe appear to be related to activities that the employees performed for the employer in the course of their employment. The employees moved their bodies in certain ways as necessitated by the work. The argument that the accidental injury could  have just as easily have happened at home has been rejected by the Appeals Panel. See Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation Appeals Panel Decision No. 991312, 1999 WL 607848, at *3 (TWCC Appeals Panel, 1999) where, in concluding that a similar injury was compensable. Of course, you always have to verify that the employee actually sustained the injury and that the incident described actually was the cause of such injury. But if those two things are present, the claims you describe would be compensable under the Texas Act.