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Pressley v. Southwestern Freight Lines6/19/2001
Appeal by defendants from opinion and award entered 17 February 2000 by the North Carolina Industrial Commission. Heard in the Court of Appeals 19 April 2001.
Defendants appeal from an opinion of the North Carolina Industrial Commission awarding plaintiff workers' compensation benefits for an occupational disease. Plaintiff, a long distance truck driver, initiated this action by filing a Form 18, Notice of Accident to Employer, alleging that he contracted coccidioidomycosis in October 1991 while carrying goods for defendant Southwestern Freight Lines between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, California. He alleged that he contracted the disease by exposure to dust-born fungus or mold. Defendants denied liability on the grounds plaintiff "does not suffer from a compensable occupational disease." Following a hearing, the deputy commissioner filed an opinion and award on 30 March 1998 concluding plaintiff "has not sustained an occupational disease within the meaning of the Workers' Compensation Act" because he failed to prove that the "disease was characteristic of and peculiar to his employment as a truck driver, and was not an ordinary disease of life to which the general public would be equally exposed."
The Full Commission reversed on appeal, finding in pertinent part:
5. . . . A biopsy performed on a lymph node removed from plaintiff's chest showed the presence of a coccidioidomycosis fungus organism. This organism lives in the soil and sand found in the southwestern United States, including Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California. It does not grow in North Carolina or in any state east of the Mississippi River. The organism can become airborne and inhaled, leading to infection in humans.
7. Plaintiff contracted coccidioidomycosis due to exposure to the organism which causes the disease while traveling in the southwestern United States. It is most likely that plaintiff inhaled the organism while in the course of his truck driving for defendant-employer. Plaintiff faced no real risk of exposure to this disease in North Carolina.
10. Plaintiff's work as a truck driver, which required him to travel to an area of the country where he could be exposed to the coccidioidomycosis fungus, placed him at an increased risk of contracting the disease when compared to the general public not so employed.
The Commission concluded, inter alia:
1. Plaintiff has sustained an occupational disease within the meaning of the Workers' Compensation Act. Plaintiff contracted the disease of coccidioidomycosis due to exposure to fungus spores in the southwestern United States while traveling in the course of his employment with defendant-employer. N.C. Gen. Stat. ยง 97-53(13).
2. In determining whether plaintiff's occupation placed him at an increased risk over that of the general public of contracting a disease, it need not be shown that the disease originates exclusively from the occupation in question. Rather it must be demonstrated that the conditions of the employment resulted in a hazard which is not present in employment generally. Booker v. Duke Medical Center, 297 N.C. 458, 256 S.E.2d 189 (1979). In this case, but for the employment-related requirement of travelling through an area where he was exposed to the fungus, plaintiff would not have contracted the disease. Members of the general public who do not face a like requirement in their occupations are not subject to the same risk; therefore plaintiff faced an increased risk of contracting coccidioidomycosis than that of the general population in North Carolina.
3. Proof of causal connection between a disease and an employee's occupation may consist of the fo
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