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In Kiowa v. Industrial Claims Appeals Office, No. 2024COA36 (Colo. Ct. App. 04/11/24), the court determined that evidence showed a knock on the head a worker experienced on the job led to symptoms requiring two cranial surgeries.

A public works manager for a town was repairing a chain on a street sweeper when he hit his head on a piece of equipment. The blow made him feel dazed, dizzy, and wobbly right away.

But after about a month, the manager's wife took him to an emergency room because he was feeling wobbly and dragging his foot. The manager underwent an emergency craniotomy for evacuation of a subdural hematoma.  A CT scan had showed a large collection of fluid compressing the right side of his brain.
 
After the manager was discharged from the hospital, he had a seizure.  Doctors then performed another craniotomy. Following this next craniotomy, the claimant continued to have cognitive difficulties and was unable to return to work.

When the claimant-manager, through counsel, filed a workers' compensation claim, the town filed a notice of contest, denying that the injuries were work-related.

An administrative law judge ruled that the injury occurred in the course and scope of employment and ordered the town to pay all reasonably necessary, authorized, and related medical benefits along with temporary total disability.  And so did the panel.

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The town appealed to court, arguing that the manager was not injured through the course of his employment but that two incidents which occurred at home or near his home on personal time caused his injury.  The claimant scraped his head on the door of a shed and fell out of his boat while cleaning it.

Longstanding precedent in Colorado, which was handed down in Prouse v. Industrial Commission, 194 P. 625 (Colo. 1920), has maintained that a workers' compensation claimant must establish a definitive time, place, and cause of injury.

Workers' Comp 101: In Colorado, an injury occurs "in the course of employment" when it takes place within the time and place limits of the employment relationship and during an activity connected with the employee's job-related functions, and an injury "arises out of" employment when it has it origin in an employee's work-related functions and is sufficiently related to those functions to be considered part of the employee's employment contract. Horodyskyj v. Karanian, 32 P.3d 470 (Colo. 2001).

The court upheld the rulings from the panel and the administrative law judge in the manager's favor, citing:

•Testimony from the claimant's wife that he started showing the effects and symptoms of a subdural hematoma shortly after the street sweeper incident, including changes in speech, memory loss, slowness of reactions or actions, and loss of function in his upper extremities.
•A town administrator noticed that "something was not right" with the claimant after the incident.

The court found that the administrative law judge and the panel followed precedent in reaching their rulings.

"The time, place, and cause were traced through the testimony of (the claimant), his wife, and his surgeon," the court wrote. "We cannot say that the administrative law judge or the Panel erred as a matter of law by concluding that (the claimant) established a reasonably definite time and place of the accident."

lonce@adjustercom.com, Lonce Lamonte, journalist, editor, adjustercom, www.adjustercom.com