The Court of Appeals of Kansas rejected an argument from an employer that injuries arising from all neutral risks are no longer compensable. The employer had been fighting the compensability of a housekeeper’s injuries after she fell twice at the hospital she worked at. The Court of Appeals of Kansas affirmed a decision from the Workers’ Compensation Board and awarded benefits to the housekeeper for her two separate unexplained falls.

A worker in a Kansas hospital fell two separate times at work in the course of a few months and was injured, and the Board decided she had proven her injuries arose from her employment even though she had no explanation for why she fell. Her employer claimed that since her falls were unexplained they arose from “neutral tasks or idiopathic causes”, making them not eligible for compensation under the workers’ comp statute.

The appellate court said that if the record showed there was a “personal character” to the injury or incident, the worker was not eligible for compensation. However, had there been an “employment character” to her fall she would be eligible. She fell while walking, which was a requirement of her employment. She told the court that she could not explain how but in both falls her foot stuck to the floor as she walked.

The court said that the language of the workers’ comp statute created an exclusion for neutral risks that had no employment character, but these injuries did have employment character because walking was a big part of her employment. The Workers’ Comp Act only made an exemption for injuries from neutral risks, like an unexplained fall, that have no employment character.

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