An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 8 – Leaves And Absences

Note that it is possible that an employee could be exposed to injurious substances in the work place which may not result in injury until years later. A classic example would be transitory exposure to asbestos which may not result in disability until several years later. In such a case, the “injury” does not occur until it becomes disabling and the school who employed the individual at the time of the injurious exposure is held liable. 2. C OMMUNICABLE D ISEASE Communicable diseases which an employee contracts as a direct consequence of his employment have long been compensable. Examples would include tuberculosis contracted by a hospital worker, or San Joaquin Valley Fever contracted by a construction worker who was exposed to dust containing infectious spores. Note however that if an employee is laid off from work during the incubation period of a communicable disease which was contracted at work, but suffers no symptoms due to the exposure, he has not sustained an industrial injury. 1447 3. I DIOPATHIC S EIZURE Falls resulting from an idiopathic condition, such as epilepsy, which manifests itself at work, will be deemed to arise out of employment because the floor or any object struck is an integral part of the work place. 1448 4. M ENTAL O R E MOTIONAL S TRESS Mental illness caused by stress or tension of work activities constitutes a compensable injury. Effective July 1993, legislation was passed which imposed a higher standard of proof for psychiatric injuries. A psychiatric injury may be held compensable if it is a mental disorder which causes disability or need for medical treatment and is diagnosed as a mental disorder using the criteria of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition (DSM-III), or the diagnostic criteria of other psychiatric diagnostic manuals which are generally approved in the medical profession. Additionally, in order to prove compensability of a psychiatric injury, the employee must show by a preponderance (51%) of the evidence that actual events of employment were predominant as to all causes combined of the psychiatric injury. 1449 The legislation concerning psychiatric injuries was intended to impose a higher threshold of compensability for psychiatric injuries. 1450 Under existing law, the “stress” which an employee may experience, and which results in psychiatric injury, has been based on a purely subjective test. Thus, if the employee reacts to the work environment and perceives it as stressful, this will supply the necessary causal element to support a finding of psychiatric injury. 1451 On the other hand, if the employment simply provided a “stage” for the employee’s emotional condition to become symptomatic, then no industrial injury has occurred.

An Administrator’s Guide to California Private School Law ©2019 Liebert Cassidy Whitmore 329