Supreme Court Decides Horseplay Case

Horseplay is not an area that is addressed frequently by the Supreme Court, so the decision in Xenia Rural Water District v. Vegors, 786 NW2d 250 (July 2010) was an interesting departure from most workers' compensation cases before the court.    The facts of the case are somewhat unusual.  Claimant and a co-worker were in the habit of acknowledging each other by activities such as waving the boom of a back hoe at the other.  On the date of injury, claimant had his hands full and acknowledged the other employee by "wiggling his butt" at him.  The co-employee the attempted to bump claimant with the mirror of his truck, but ended up hitting him with the truck bed.


The commissioner found claimant entitled to benefits, holding that the burden of proving horseplay was on the employer.  The commissioner also rejected a defense that the injury was caused by a willful act of a third party.  The district court reversed and denied benefits to claimant.


As an initial matter, the court found that the commissioner was not vested with the authority to interpret Iowa Code sections 85.3(1) and 85.16(3).  Therefore, the conclusions of the commissioner were viewed for errors at law rather than on a more deferential basis.


The court found that the prohibition on recovery where the injury resulted from horseplay stemmed from the requirement that injuries arise out of and in the course of employment.  Further, the proper analysis was whether the claimant substantially deviated from the course of employment.  The burden of demonstrating that the injury was not the result of horseplay ultimately rested with the claimant, since this was a part of the arising out of/in the course of burden.  Thus, the burden did not shift to the employer because they had alleged horseplay as a defense.


The court noted that in Ford v. Barcus, 155 N.W.2d 507, 511 (1968), an employee who voluntarily instigates and aggressively participates in horseplay cannot recover workers' compensation benefits.  But this denial of benefits only occurs where "claimant substantially deviates from the employment."  Innocent employees who are injured as a result of another's horseplay may recover.  Four factors are taken into account in determining whether the horseplay is a deviation from the course of employment:

• extent and seriousness of deviation
• completeness of the deviation
• extent to which horseplay was an accepted part of employment 
• extent to which the nature of the employment may be expected to include some horseplay

According to the court, the character of claimant's action of shaking his rear end - not the injury that resulted - must be evaluated to determine whether this was a sufficient deviation to bar recovery.  The court found that this could not be determined as a matter of law.  Because of this, the case was remanded to the agency to determine whether the facts justified a finding of horseplay.

The court also addressed the issue of whether compensation should be denied because the injury was caused by the willful act of a third party.  The court holds that the action of the co-employee was not done for reasons "personal to the employee" and because of this, section 85.16(3) did not apply.  According to the court, for 85.16(3) to apply, the reasons for the action of the third party must be based on something in the personal relationship between the claimant and the third party "outside the working environment."  Since there was no such evidence in this case, the affirmative defense under 85.16(3) did not apply as a matter of law.